NOV 18 1RJU

GOD AND BREAD

WITH OTHEE SEEMONS

BY

MARVIN R. VINCENT, D.D.

PASTOR OF THE CHURCH OF THE COVENANT, NEW YORK

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NEW YORK
DODD, MEAD, AND COMPANY

1884

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lwA8«IHOTOW

Copyright, 1884,
By DODD, MEAD, & COMPANY.

ELECTROTYPED AND PRINTED

BY RAND, AVERY, AND COMPANY,

BOSTON.

&ije Congregation of tfje glutei) of t{)e (Eofanant

Cfjts Volume,

Pobltsfjeo at &fjeir Eeqimst,

Eg &ffecttonateig Enscrtfoo

38g ^Tfjeir Pastor.

CONTENTS.

PAGB

I. God and Beead 3

II. Does it Pay? 21

III. The Single Need 39

IV. Facing God 59

V. Light and Loyalty 77

VI. The Obdebed Steps 97

VII. Fidelity and Dominion 115

VEIL Extea Seevice 135

IX. The Pelde of Care 153

X. The Plough and the Kingdom . . 173

XI. Joy and Judgment . . . - . . . 189

XII. Silent befoee God 207

XIII. A Lepee's Logic .227

XIV. Pbayee and Panoply . . . . 247
XV. The Daysman 265

XVI. The Lesson of Eipeness .... 285

XVII. Steength, Victoey, and Knowledge ln

Youth 305

XVLLI. God and the Times of Ignoeance . . 323

XIX. The Peomise of Incompleteness . . 343

XX. Only a Little. While .... 363

v

GOD AND BREAD.

L

GOD AND BREAD.

" But he answered and said, It is written, Man shall not live
by bread alone, but by every word that proceedeth out of the
mouth of God." —Matt. iv. 4.

HOW shall we live ? Multitudes of people are
asking that question to-day with peculiar
earnestness. The man who could give a satisfac-
tory practical answer would be regarded as the
greatest of all public benefactors.

But why do not men go to the Bible for an an-
swer ? For one reason : because many of them, at
least, assume that the Bible has little or nothing to
do with their every-day affairs. It does very well
to preach from, to read sometimes on Sundays, to
furnish fine sentiments and apt quotations ; but in
the pushing, open-eyed world of business, in the
atmosphere of capital, stocks, bonds, business-com-
binations, panics, it is as much out of place as a
fifth-century hermit would be on Wall Street.

Then, again, if they do chance to consult the
Bible, they find such astonishing answers, so utter-
ly at variance with the principles by which they
have been accustomed to live, that they quickly
shut the book, saying, " Fanciful ! Impracticable ! "

4 GOD AND BREAD.

This text, for instance, offers an answer to the
question, " How shall we live ? " It strikes out, in
a sentence, a theory of living. How generally that
theory has been accepted we can see for ourselves
without looking very far. It has stood on record
all these centuries: yet the cry, "How shall we
live ? " is as clamorous as ever; and the great mass
of society is living by quite a different, indeed, an
opposite, theory.

To understand Christ's theory as here pro-
pounded, we must examine briefly the story of
Christ's temptation, with which it is connected.

After having fasted for forty days, our Lord was
visited by the great tempter of mankind. He was
weakened by hunger ; and his hunger may have
been aggravated, as has been suggested, by the
very appearance of the stones which strewed the
ground, and which in that region have the shape
of little loaves of bread. Satan began his assault
by urging Jesus to use his divine power in chan-
ging these stones into actual loaves, and thus to
appease his hunger. It was a very plausible temp-
tation. "Here thou art, the Son of God, the
powers of heaven at thy command. Why shouldst
thou suffer from a vulgar, human need ? It should
be no hard thing for thee to make a loaf out of a
stone. If thou be the Son of God, command that
these stones be made bread."

Now, this temptation was aimed at Jesus as an
individual, and as the head and representative of a
kingdom. Addressed to Christ as an individual,
it was intended to make him commit himself to the

GOD AND BREAD. 5

admission that his life could be sustained only by
external and visible means. If Christ had yielded,
he would have said, in so doing, " Bread is indispen-
sable to the support of life. I can live only as I
shall have bread. I shall perish if I do not have it."

But suppose the tempter had quoted Scripture,
as he did a little later, and had cited the story of
the manna in the wilderness, and had clinched that
with those verses of the seventy-eighth Psalm: " He
rained down manna upon them to eat, and had
given them of the corn of heaven. Man did eat
angels' food : he sent them meat to the full."
Suppose he had said, " As the Son of God, do you
profess to be more scrupulous than God himself9
He wrought a miracle for his hungry children : why
should you hesitate to do the same for yourself?"

Our Lord's answer included this very case, and
was pointed directly at it ; since his words are a
quotation of Moses' words to the Israelites in his
review of their history. God's intent in the mi-
raculous giving of the manna — a new, special thing,
created for the special need — was to show the
people that their life depended directly upon him,
and not upon ordinary means of support. Cut off,
as they were, from their accustomed food, they
should, nevertheless, be fed, and drink abundantly,
through God's special bounty. They should not
starve because the wilderness did not furnish the
products of the Nile valley, not even if it were
utterly barren. There was a purpose in God's
giving them an unfamiliar article of food, and in
giving it through unfamiliar channels. Their own

6 GOD AND BREAD.

exertions had nothing to do with their subsistence,
beyond gathering each day's supply at their tent-
doors. The nature of the supply left no room for
them to boast of their own enterprise or prudence
in their journey through the desert. Hence Moses
says, " He humbled thee, and suffered thee to hun-
ger, and fed thee with manna, which thou knewest
not, neither did thy fathers know; that he might
make thee know that man doth not live by bread
only, but by every word that proceedeth out of the
mouth of the Lord doth man live." 1

Here, then, the two theories of living are square-
ly confronted. Satan, as the prince of this world,
announces his, and tries to win Christ's assent to
it: "Man lives by bread, and by bread alone"
Christ replies: "Man lives not by bread, but by
God." Man lives by God's gifts, only as God is
behind them. Man's real support is not in the
gifts, but in the Giver.

What is covered by this word " bread " 9
It covers the whole visible economy of life, — all
that range of supplies, helps, and supports upon
which men usually depend to keep themselves
alive, and to make life comfortable and enjoyable.
It covers the whole economy of food and drink,
clothing, shelter, ministry to the senses, to power,
respectability, and worldly honor. The world's
commonly accepted theory is, By these things we
live. We cannot get on without them. Do you need
to be told how widely that theory prevails in soci-

J Deut. viii. 3.

GOD AND BREAD. 7

ety to-day ? For what are the mass of men spend-
ing their energies ? For food and raiment and
position, — for the abundance and superfluity of
these things. Not for shelter merely, but for costly
homes. Not for competency merely, but for wealth,
and vast wealth ; the plain inference being, " We
cannot have too much of such things : a man's
life does consist in the abundance of the things
which he possesses."

Now, I am not blind to men's natural and par-
donable anxiety about such things. Food and rai-
ment and home are parts of God 's own economy of
life in this world ; and Christ himself says, " Your
heavenly Father knoweth that ye have need of all
these things/' But I am speaking of the false
position in which men put these things, — of their
tendency to separate them from God, and to seek
to live by them alone. While Christ says, " Your
Father knoweth that ye have need of these," he
forbids men to hold them alone or first in their
thought. Something is to take precedence of the
gifts, and that is the Giver. The gifts are to be
sought through the Giver. Men often seek food
and raiment without reference to God, and often
in ways forbidden by God : whereas Christ says,
" Seek God first, seek to be under his rule, seek
to be right according to his law, and the food and
raiment will come with these." The kingdom of
God includes bread; and hence, in the Lord's
Prayer, immediately after the petition, " Thy king-
dom come, Thy will be done," comes the prayer for
daily bread.

8 GOD AND BREAD.

Man lives by God, in direct dependence on God.
God may use, and does commonly use, natural
means for man's support; but God is not limited
to these. Men think he is. When these means dis-
appear, they think all is over. But they forget that
these things derive all their power to sustain and
to delight from God. It is God alone that gives
any value or efficiency to these. Men say that
the secret of life is to be in right relations to the
world. God says, "You are in right relation to
nothing until you are right with me. You are
nothing at all, — not so much as that red leaf
driven by the wind, which lies now over a gold-
mine, and now on the roof of a hovel; nothing,
save as I uphold you, and send you your food,
and give it power to nourish you, and to please
your palate. Dainties are no better than chaff if
I do not impart their quality. Let me withdraw
my hand, and see what they will do for you."

The very structure of the body asserts that man
was intended to eat and drink. The earth was
commanded by God to bring forth fruit for the ser-
vice of man. The facts of heat and cold and tem-
pest suggest clothing and shelter. If man lives in a
spiritual economy, he also lives in a natural econ-
omy, to which he is plainly adapted by his Creator,
and which is as plainly adapted to meet his condi-
tions. But Nature everywhere points beyond her-
self. The nature of man points up to God. If
that is first which is natural, it is only first in
order of succession, not of importance. If the physi-
cal life of the babe precedes the intellectual and

GOD AND BREAD. \)

moral life of the strong man, the intellectual and
moral life is none the less the higher stage of be-
ing. If God so arranges the physical life of man
that it is sustained ordinarily by food, it is that the
physical life should suggest the higher life of the
soul, and the bread the Giver of the bread. Why,
in ordinary matters men recognize this principle
clearly enough, that, ultimately, the great forces
on which they depend for the common transactions
of life are not material. A cable despatch comes to
you across the Atlantic. You know that it passed
over a wire ; you know that it was borne by an
electric current; but you also know that neither
wire nor current nor telegraphic key is of any
avail until a human mind brings them into com-
bination. The cable will not carry messages of
itself. You do not for a moment think that iron
and fire and water only carry you over the rails
from New York to San Francisco. Mind and will
must adjust and apply these agents. No more will
bread avail without God. Behind all this physical
economy, to which bread is the visible minister, are
the divine Mind and Will, creating and adjusting
the human organism and its minister alike. Every
thing depends on that divine Mind and Will.

And in proof of this, God has now and then put
men in places where the physical ministry failed,
and has shown them, that, if need were, he could
sustain their life without it. Moses was with him
on the summit of that barren mountain for forty
days, nourished by no mortal food. Elijah trav-
elled in the strength of a single meal for forty

10 GOD AND BREAD.

days. God has only to say uLive," and man lives,
and continues to live whether there is bread or
not. Says Jeremy Taylor, "If the flesh-pots be
removed, He can alter the appetite ; and when our
stock is spent, He can also lessen the necessity :
or, if that continues, He can drown the sense of
it in a deluge of patience and resignation.,, And
Wesley writes, —

" Man doth not live by bread alone :
Whate'er thou wilt, can feed.
Thy power converts the bread to stone,
And turns the stone to bread.

Thou art our food : we taste thee now.

In thee we move and breathe.
Our bodies' only life art thou,

And all beside is death."

But I have said, that Christ appeared in this
temptation as the head and representative of a
kingdom : whatever rule or policy he might adopt
for himself would give the law for his followers.

If, then, our Lord had yielded to this first
temptation, he would have committed himself to
the bread-theory as the law of his kingdom, no
less than of his own life. He would have said,
by changing the stones into bread, " As /cannot
live without bread, so my kingdom cannot thrive
so long as men's worldly needs are unsupplied.
My administration must be a turning of stones
into bread. It must make men happy by at once
miraculously removing all want and suffering from
the world, and inaugurating an era of worldly
prosperity."

GOD AND BREAD. 11

We know that this has not been Christ's policy.
He abjured it in this answer to Satan. He did,
indeed, mean that a time should come when the
wilderness and the solitary place should be glad ;
but that was to be the result of holiness, of the
subjection of society to a King, the girdle of whose
loins should be righteousness. This is what Christ
asserts, that society, no less than man as an indi-
vidual, truly lives only as it lives by dependence
on God. Social prosperity is based on righteous-
ness. It would be possible to test the matter on
a small scale. Suppose that a man of immense
wealth and grand administrative power should
have a little town of a thousand people given to
him in charge, with absolute authority to rule it,
and to develop its resources in his own way. Sup-
pose the man to say, " Yes, I will make this people
as happy as a community can be. I will build
comfortable homes for those who are poor. I will
give each of these poor families a competence. I
will educate all these ignorant ones. Poverty and
squalor shall disappear. The sanitary arrange-
ments shall be perfect. There shall be no foul
pools to breed miasma. There shall be pure water
and good ventilation." If the plan embraced
nothing more, the man, however in earnest and
philanthropic, would be doing precisely what the
Devil wanted Christ to do. He would have the
power — which to those poor people would be as
good as miraculous — of changing bodily misery
to comfort, stones to bread. His theory would be
the bread-theory, prosperity through the supply

12 GOD AND BREAD.

of physical need. Do you think that would be a
happy community ? Do you think that a society
which should recognize God nowhere would be
a peaceful, well-ordered body? Do you think
that good homes and good food and ventilation
would keep out passion and greed, or do away
with depraved appetites ? No. Culture would
only refine selfishness. Competency would furnish
greater power for mischief. Natural differences
of talent and energy would assert themselves, and
call out the envy which attaches to such differ-
ences. The members of that community, in short,
would be no happier with bread, and without God,
than they were without either God or bread, and
would be infinitely more dangerous. The bread-
theory is the radical weakness of communism, in
that it contemplates only the adjustment of out-
ward conditions and the satisfaction of natural
appetites. There must be, as we all know, a mate-
rial basis in society, just as there must be an
underground foundation for a palace. That is not
first which is spiritual ; but when you look down
into an excavation, and see great foundations laid,
you say, "A house is to be built here. That
foundation means a house, or it means nothing."
So, if civilization is only a matter of material
forces, of steam and electricity, of telephones and
sewing-machines, of drainage and ventilation ; nay,
if it add to these, taste and culture, libraries and
art-galleries, and leave out God and conscience,
and faith and worship, — it is only a foundation,
daily emphasizing the lack of its superstructure.

GOD AND BREAD. 13

Civilization, without God and righteousness, is
mere cellarage. The community which lives by
bread, without God, does not truly live.

History repeats itself. In these modern days
one finds himself rummaging the pages of Gibbon
and Tacitus and Juvenal. Look at those old
empires which lived by bread alone ; by riches so
enormous that it seems as if God had determined
to give money a chance to do its best ; living by
power so vast that there were no more worlds to
conquer; living by pleasure so prodigal and so
refined and varied that the liveliest invention
was exhausted, and the keenest appetite surfeited.
Babylon, Rome, Antioch, Alexandria, Carthage, —
to-day you dare not open to your children the
records of the inner life of these communities.
You almost hesitate to read its fearful summary in
the first chapter of Paul's Epistle to the Romans.

And what of ourselves? what of this nine-
teenth-century civilization in America, to go no
farther ? What is our measure of progress ? Has
this civilization advanced in the measure in which
it has woven rich stuffs, carved statues, painted
pictures, wrought cunningly in gold and ivory,
and written with grace and power? Other and
earlier centuries have these to show as well as we.
In many of these things we still take our lessons
from them. No, truly. When the civilizations
of the world sent their representative products to
Philadelphia, the true key and test of that vast
exhibition of human achievement were in one little
case — where the word of God, translated into the

14 GOD AND BREAD.

various tongues of the earth, was spread before
the spectator. Just so far as the principles of
that book are behind and beneath the material
display, does it mark a real progress. The nation,
like the man, lives truly, only as it lives by God,
and not by bread alone. I look back to the barren
mountain of the temptation. I see, rising before
the eyes of the weak and exhausted Son of man,
the vision of the kingdoms of this world and their
glory, vested with the witching glamour of satanic
sorcery. I hear the stupendous offer of the whole
mass of the kingdoms which know not God, with
all their pomp of art and learning, of fleets and
armies, all on the simple condition of accepting
the law of life by bread instead of life by God.
And that picture is lifted up to-day, amid the
crazy rush of the exchange and the crash of fall-
ing fortunes, as a silent reminder that the world's
great pattern of life chose life by God, — though
there went with it the desert, and Gethsemane,
and the cross, and the long, sad centuries of the
growth of righteousness, — rather than life by
bread, with its quick and superficial triumphs, and
the gilded glory of Satan's kingdom. Through all
time, until the kingdom of God shall have fully
come, his voice will make itself heard, above the
roar of traffic and the whirl of dissipation, —
" Thou shalt worship the Lord thy God, and him
only shalt thou serve."

And suppose bread fails. Suppose the body
literally starves, and the man dies, as we say.
Is Christ's theory disproved? By no means.

GOD AND BREAD 15

Christ's choice led him to the cross, and many a
follower of his has been forced to choose between
the bread-theory and death. When God says that
man shall live by his word, he means by " life "
far more than the little span of human years, with
their eating arid drinking and pleasure and gain-
getting. This utterance of the world's Redeemer
assumes the fact of immortality. If not, the
theory of life by God is branded; and there is
nothing for us but the bread-theory : " Let us eat
and drink; for to-morrow we die." To live by
the word of God is to share the eternal life of
God. The bread-life is but the prelude and faint
type of this. It gets all its real meaning and
value from this. Human life is nothing if it does
not foreshadow the larger life of eternity: and
when the lower physical life fails for lack of
bread, the man does not cease to live; he only
begins to live, and to prove that if man cannot
live by bread alone, he can live by God alone.

Here, then, we have Christ's theory of life, in-
dividual and social. Man lives by God's gifts, but
not by the gifts only. By bread, but not by bread
alone. Bread is nothing without God. Bread gets
all its power to feed from God. Bread points
away from itself to God. Bread has a part in the
divine economy of society ; but it comes in with
the kingdom of God, under its law, and not as its
substitute.

In such disturbances as those of the past week,
it is well that men take heed lest their anxiety
should throw them upon Satan's bread-theory, and

16 GOD AND BREAD.

divert them from the counter theory of life by
God. We cannot, being human, be entirely free
from care. At any rate, we are not. But this we
can do, by God s help : we can keep it constantly
before us, that our life, after all, is not in these
material things. The loss of the material gift does
not carry with it the loss of the divine Giver.
The man who lives by bread alone has nothing
when bread is gone. He may run down the whole
line of his reserves, and find nothing which is be-
yond the possibility of disaster. But you who live
by God, when you reach back to what lies behind
bread, find the best of your treasure, which moth
and rust cannot corrupt, nor thieves break through
and steal. Face the question to-day ; it is a good
time, in the presence of these hard tests. What
is my theory of life ? Is it Christ, or Satan ? Is
it bread alone, or bread with God ? Ask yourself,
" Where is my heart fixed most of the time ? Is
it on God, as my life ? or is it on my stocks and
securities and ventures ? " And, ere you answer
the question, call up the words of your Lord and
Saviour, " Where your treasure is, there will your
heart be also." The practical working of the two
theories is written down in lines which he that runs,
may read. Before you is the picture of the Man
of Sorrows, who had not where to lay his head,,
reviled and spoken against, walking by his hard
road to the garden and to the cross, and yet delib-
erately choosing to live by God rather than by
bread; and you see the choice vindicated by the
peace and poise of that life, by the enthusiasm of

GOD AND BREAD. 17

its faith, by its heavenly joy in its work, by its
ever-growing power over the life of the world, by
the adoration and love and praise daily wafted
towards it from millions of souls : and all this
while the worldly dominion he refused has proved
a vanished shadow, while the old empires have
gone down in ruin, and their pleasures have turned
to a corruption which is an offence in the world's
nostrils. The old city which rang with the cry of
" Bread and the Circus ! " is only a monument now.
The tourist wanders over the Palatine, and peers
down into the choked vaults of the Csesars' pal-
aces ; and the antiquarian rummages where Nero's
fish-ponds gleamed, and climbs along the broken
tiers of the Coliseum, from which the culture and
beauty and fashion of Rome looked down with
delight upon Christian martyrs in the fangs of
tigers.

As you look on this picture, surely you will take
fresh heart; surely you will win a new faith in
Christ's theory ; surely you will not dare, with the
glory of that life before you, to take the baser the-
ory of the prince of this world, to choose the life
which is by bread alone ! You have seen more
than one man who lived by bread alone find his the-
ory of life fail. You have seen him, when bread
failed, go down, down, heart-broken, dishonored,
ruined, reputation gone, conscience stained, honor
blighted, manhood wrecked, nothing left ; but you
never saw, and you never will see, such a catastro-
phe befall a man who lived by God. When the
silver and the gold are gone, he has the God who

18 GOD AND BREAD.

holds the treasures of the earth in his hand. He
has manhood untainted, his best self untouched,
and round him the strong arm of Him who says,
" Cast all thy care on me. I will never leave thee,
nor forsake thee."

II.

DOES IT PAY?

II.

DOES IT PAY ?

" For what shall a man be profited, if he shall gain the whole
world, and forfeit his life ? or what shall a man give in exchange
for his life ? " — Matt. xvi. 26.

"/COMMONPLACE is contemptible," is the ver-
V^ diet of modern culture. Not of modern cul-
ture only : the Athenians, we are told, were equally
impatient of it, and spent their time in nothing
else but either to hear or to tell some new thing.
But is this a true verdict? Stone pavements, for
instance, are very commonplace to us; so much
so, that we have ceased to be conscious of them,
and walk or ride over them all day long without
a thought of what we are treading on. When the
street is torn up, when we come to a muddy gap
in our accustomed track, we wake up to the fact,
that, in a city, stone pavements count for a good
deal. Nobody takes notice of lamp-posts; they
are very commonplace : but let the lights go out
all over the city, and we begin to find out how
large a part they play in our convenience and
safety. The fact is, that the best things in our
lives are the commonplace and familiar things, —
the senses, health, home, reading, and writing. It

21

22 DOES IT PAY?

is often the highest praise of a thing that it has
become commonplace. A thing which has no
value does not pass into common use. The best
thing that can be said of bread is, that everybody
uses it.

So of texts of Scripture. Certain texts carry a
flavor of novelty, while others are household words.
Our text to-day is one of these latter. I suppose
every preacher in Christendom has preached upon
it some time or other. It is more than doubtful
if any thing new can be said about it; and yet
that is the best reason for preaching about it : for
this text is to Christianity just what the solid
ground is to our business and building, just what
bread is to our living. It is a shaft that opens
down into the very heart and centre of the gospel,
and branches off under the whole Bible. No
reader or preacher of the Bible can escape the
truth it tells. He must run against it if he reads
the Bible at all.

What, then, is the truth ? It takes the form of
a question of value, — a question which, in some
shape, interests us all. It is thrown into the set-
ting of the market-place. All life is a bid for
something, — that something, whatever it be, which
each of us calls his end or object in life. That
something we want; and for it we are willing to
pay a price, — our labor, our pains, our best
thought, our temporary rest and comfort some-
times. I seem to see the great market in the
fresh morning. The young, vigorous forms, and
the bright, eager faces are pouring in at the gate.

DOES IT PAY? 23

There is one thing up at auction, though there
seem to be many. It is the world. Here one
cries up honors ! — literary, military, civic honors,
— praise of men, nattering of crowds, flaming par-
agraphs in the newspapers ; social honors, — hom-
age to beauty, society at your feet. Here is a rival
vender. Pleasures ! what infinite variety ! appeals
to every sense, suited to all tastes ; coarser wares
for the coarser grained, and subtler enjoyments for
the aesthetic ; pleasures of meat and drink, pleas-
ures of luxurious ease, pleasures of artistic study ;
the wildest excitements, the most delicious lan-
guors; pleasures of color and of sound and of
perfume, — all going, going cheap ! In another
corner, wealth ! close beside it, power ! The world
is on sale. Do monks and puritans tell us it is a
" fleeting show " ? Ha ! it is a good world, full of
good things. And the silks and jewels rustle and
sparkle, and the banners wave, and the trumpets
sound, and the gold chinks, and the sweet odors
rise in rich steams, and the air is laden with sweet
harmonies, and glowing with lovely hues. A good
world, and going so cheap too ! something within
the reach of everybody : who will buy ? Do you
wonder that young eyes grow brighter, and young
cheeks flush, and young hearts beat quicker? So
much for youth, especially. Why, the world is for
youth. Hope, love, pleasure, — they are all for
youth. I seem to see, in the midst of that eager
throng, one who appears far more interested in
the buyers than in the wares. With a wonderful
blending of majesty, affection, and sadness, he

24 DOES IT PAY?

scans the young traders as they crowd round the
booths. And now I see him lay a hand — a hand
with a strange mark on it — upon the shoulder of
an eager youth, who is crowding forward, and bid-
ding high and eagerly ; and, as the youth turns im-
patiently, he gazes into his face with a look which
seems to go down to the deepest secret of his heart,
with a love which disarms resentment, and says,
" Wait a little. There is time enough to buy here.
One question only: that thing which you want,
and for which you have just bidden so much, what
shall it profit you ? "

I have only thrown into a kind of allegory what
is actually going on. I have merely used a fancy
to carry a fact. I want you to see and feel the
fact, if you will, the fact that the world is bidding
for your homage, your allegiance, your love, your
energy. It is a fact that the world appeals to you
to accept its rules, its customs, its modes of think-
ing, its ends of living. It is a fact that the Lord
Christ says to every one of you, "Suppose you
get it. Suppose you make it all yours, all the
kingdoms of the world and the glory of them, —
what good is it going to do you ? You are about
making a bargain : of course you want to make a
profitable one. Well, what shall it profit you if
you gain the whole world, and lose your own
life?"

Notice, then, what our Lord tells you in this text.
First, that your choice of a principle and end of
living involves an exchange. You get nothing in
life, good or bad, without cost. You know very

DOES IT PAY? 25

well, that, if you are to succeed in business, you
will do it at the cost of leisure and ease and
amusement. You must work when you would
rather rest. You must stay in the hot, dusty city,
when you would rather be among the cool hills,
or down by the breezy sea. If you would suc-
ceed in medicine, you must conquer your natural
repugnance to disgusting sights and odors. If
in literature, you must shut yourself up with
books, and toil while others sleep. No man ever
leaped into a success of any kind without cost to
himself. Success is always paid for with some
coin or other. Do you expect you will win moral
success, spiritual victory, on any other terms?
Is this grandest and highest of successes going to
be poured into your lap as a free gift, for nothing ?
Secondly, look then, at the nature of exchange
in this particular case. What do you pay, suppos-
ing you buy the world ? You have passed many a
shop in cities, in the window of which you nave
read, "price fixed." The vender would have you
know that you need not try to beat him down.
He will take so much, and no less. If you want
the article, take it at that price : if -you do not care
to pay that price, let it alone. That exactly rep-
resents the case here. If you buy the world, you
pay a definite price for it, a price from which there
is no discount to the most favored buyer ; and that
price is your life. You see our Lord is not merely
putting a supposed case, a bare possibility, as if
it might possibly happen that a man should do
so monstrous a thing as to lose his life for the

26 DOES IT PAY?

sake of the world : he states it as a principle, a
universal fact, that the man who takes the world
takes it at the price of his life. For you will notice
that the text is only the conclusion of the state-
ment in the previous verses, about which there
cannot be any doubt. " Suppose a man wants to
come after me," says our Lord. " He pays for the
privilege this price ; namely, that he denies self, and
takes up the cross. Suppose a man wants to keep
his life, his worldly, selfish, lower life ; to live for
self, as we say ; to keep his pleasures, his pursuits,
his studies, under the economy of this world. He
can do it. He can save that life, but only at the
expense of his real life, his better, Christlike self,
which Christ stands ready to develop in him. He
that would save his life shall lose it." If the neat,
smooth, wheat-corn should say, " This form of life
is good enough for me : I prefer to remain as I am.
I do not like going into the dark earth, and part-
ing with my identity," all that could be answered
would be, " Very well. Remain as you are ; only,
the price of your remaining is the forfeiture of that
higher, more beautiful form of life, — the bearded
stalk with its multiplied grains." The higher life
is at the expense of the lower. " Except a corn of
wheat fall into the ground and die, it abideth
alone." If it bring forth fruit, if it would save
the lovelier, richer life, it must lose the other form
of life. If a man wants his shoulder free of the
cross, he can have it so ; only, he forfeits what-
ever good comes of being Christ's disciple. The
two things exclude each other. You cannot have

DOES IT PAY? 27

Christ and self too ; you cannot follow Christ, and
be crossless ; you cannot live partly in the higher,
and partly in the lower, life : you must choose be-
tween them ; and, whichever you choose, you pay
for it with the other.

Here, then, is Christ's fixed price, — Your life
for the world. He states it to you here: he
hears you bid for the world, and he asks you,
"What then? Is it a good purchase? If so, you
ought to be able to tell why." You pay what
seems to me an extravagant price for a piece of
land, and yet there may really be no extravagance
about it. You may have special reasons for desir-
ing that situation, — reasons which make it more
valuable to you than it could be to any other man ;
only you can surely give those reasons. You can
surely show that you are getting your money's
worth. So Christ says to you, " You pay your life
for the world. It is a high price, but doubtless
you can give a reason for paying it. How shall
you be profited if you gain the world and lose your
life?"

Will it not be well to stop, and examine the value
of this purchase before the bargain is concluded ?
And please to note, that, in what I shall have to say
about it, I shall appeal mostly to your own observa-
tion and experience. I shall go into no guesses
nor speculations. But let me first say, that you
may be none the less a purchaser of the world if
you do not go to the length of our Saviour's sup-
position, and gain the whole world. You need not
be rich nor powerful nor luxurious to be worldly,

28 DOES IT PAY?

and to exchange your life for the world. You may
be as ignorant and as rude in your life as a Hot-
tentot, and as poor as Lazarus, and yet have gained
the world and lost your life. For this is not
merely a question of the things which you acquire
by your exchange: it is a question of the law
under which you put yourself, of the moral quality
of the end which you seek. It was not Lazarus'
poverty which carried him to Abraham's bosom,
nor Dives' riches which put him on the other side
of the gulf. It is possible for you to be quite as
worldly in poverty as in wealth, in weakness and
obscurity as in power. It is enough that you
choose to follow the world's rule ; that you find
your pleasure, whatever it be, in going the world's
way ; that you live, in short, for just such ends,
and in just such relations to your fellowmen, as
you would if there were no such thing as God and
heaven, love and unselfish ministry.

But suppose we go to the entire length of the
Lord's words. Suppose you gain the whole world,
every thing the world has to give you. I submit
to you first, that you have gotten something perish-
able. Suppose you should buy a beautiful flask
of some precious cordial, with the understanding
that there was a secret leak in the flask which you
could not find nor stop, and through which the
precious liquid was slowly trickling away. Would
you not be deemed a fool ? Yet you buy the world
with this certainty. Grant that its pleasures are
ravishing, its sights and harmonies bewitching:
you know as well as I do that they cannot last. The

DOES IT PAY? 29

world is at the feet of your beauty, young woman.
Are you willing to look to-day into a mirror which
shall show you the face of thirty years hence ? The
world praises you, young man. Do you not know
that the world will soon tire of you, and kick you
aside for a new object? Do you not know — you
may easily know, for the thing is all through his-
tory — that the very men who sing " Hosanna ! "
to-day, will cry " Crucify him ! " to-morrow? Drip,
drip! The golden cordial is going. The clock
strikes one ! A drop gone. Two ! Another drop.
Three ! Another. And so on round the dial, only
to begin again. The world is passing away. Men
and women are growing old before your very faces.
Your purchase has this quality, at least, — it will
not last.

But I submit to you further, your interest in it
will not last. I know it does not seem so now.
You are so full of burning zeal to grasp the world
that it seems as though your desire would never
cool. But " the world passeth away, and the desire
of it. " The fascination of the world is largely in
your zest for it. The richest banquet has no charm
for you if you are sick or surfeited. But you see
for yourselves that the zest for the world passes
away with the world. There were certain things
which you longed to have and to do when you were
boys and girls ; you are not very old now, but you
do not care for those things any more : and that
weakening of desire is going on all the time. The
time comes to all men when they say, " I have no
pleasure in them." The pleasures of youth re-

30 DOES IT PAY?

quire the vigor and the freshness of youth. The
time comes when the strong man's ambition begins
to droop, and he does not kindle at the call of
fame. The time comes when the honored and
praised man becomes indifferent to honor and
praise, and only asks the world to let him go on
his way in quiet. You have purchased, in short,
something which you will cease to desire.

And yet, ceasing to desire is not satisfaction.
Your ceasing to desire will not be the feeling of
the man whose appetite is sated, but rather of
him whose food has become loathsome. And I say
of your purchase, It will not satisfy you. Did you
ever achieve any worldly success, or win any world-
ly prize, that you did not want something else be-
side ? Why, open your eyes, and look about you.
All round you are men and women who have
gained the world. The world is all before them
where to choose. They can gratify their tastes ;
they can eat and drink whatever the world's mar-
kets or gardens furnish ; they can command every
pleasure for the eye; they can travel when and
whither they please; and yet they wander list-
lessly about, not knowing what to do with them
selves, — now in Europe, now on the Nile, now in
Asia, going from scene to scene, from gallery to
gallery, from spectacle to spectacle, all the while
possessed and driven by a consuming restlessness.
Or they are in business. The man has gotten his
million : he wants another million, and then anoth-
er. He has gotten his position, but there is an-
other man a step higher than he. Alexander had

DOES IT PAY? 31

conquered the world : there was no more to con-
quer, and he wept. You have purchased something
unsatisfying.

But still further. You have gotten something
dangerous. Men would laugh to see you buying a
pair of fetters or handcuffs in the market, but that
is just what you are doing. You think you are
buying something to possess : did it ever occur to
you that it might possess you ? You are buying
the world as a servant : did it ever occur to you
that you might change places, and that the world
might become master, and a hard one at that?
" The wages of sin." But it is a master, and not a
servant, that pays wages. No doubt of it. When
you buy the world, you buy a master at the price
of your life. A terrible mistake, to find that you
have paid your best, your all, for slavery, when you
thought you were buying freedom. Do you think
that is a morbid fancy ? Nay : see for yourselves.
Anything that is necessary to a man is his master,
is it not ? Did you never see a man whose whole
thought and life had been concentrated on money-
making, and who could not rest when he wanted to,
could not live without the excitement of the money-
market? Did you never know a man's honesty
mastered by the love for gain? Did you never
know a man who had fed himself on the world's
praise, until, when his banquet was withdrawn, and
men forsook his shrine for that of another popular
idol, his manhood drooped and shrivelled, and he
became a disappointed, snarling misanthrope ? Did
you ever know a more relentless, masterful demon

82 DOES IT PAY?

than that which drives the woman whose chief end
in life is social position ? A dangerous thing this
purchase ! The selfish man is a suicide : his lower
self kills the higher. A man takes on the measure
of his aim. He who aims high is the nobler, even
though he miss his mark. His arrow will fly high-
er aimed at the sun, than when aimed at something
on his own level. You see and know for your-
selves that one who lives for low, sensual ends is
lower and meaner in the quality of his manhood.
Dangerous ! you know what masters drink and the
passion for gaming become. Dangerous ! there is
a life going on in certain circles in this city, which
veils itself under social proprieties and elegances,
but which is aptly described by the term " fast."
A continuous whirl of feasting and spectacles and
carnivals, which is undermining some of the bright-
est youthful promise, and blighting some of the
best young manhood and womanhood of this city.
Do you know what the end of that will be ? Some
of you have seen Couture's great picture, " The
Decadence of the Romans," in the gallery of the
Luxembourg at Paris, — a picture of a luxurious
hall, where a frenzied orgie is at its height, a car-
nival of drunkenness and wantonness. A drunken
youth, with a wreath in his tangled hair, sits upon
a pedestal ; while a reeling boy proffers a dripping
goblet to the marble mouth of a statue. The old
Roman dignity is gone from the brutalized faces of
the revellers, which contrast sadly with the noble
features of the statues of the old Roman worthies
ranged round the hall, and with the sad faces of a

DOES IT PAY? 33

group of thoughtful-looking men who are quitting
the scene. And what is perhaps as significant as
any other feature is, that the faces of this picture
present a surprising likeness to faces which one
sees every day in the streets of Paris, and that the
models for this wreck of human nature are fur-
nished by the painter's own city. It is a truth not
told by Paris only. It has been told over and
over again, as one city after another — Antioch,
Corinth, Pome, Sybaris — has gone over the preci-
pice. It is the story of the inevitable end of fast
life and of fast society. You buy a dangerous thing
when you buy the world.

And, once more, you come to the line at last,
and pass over. You and I do not know much
about that future world: speculation amounts to
little. The word of God is reticent about details ;
and all that we do know, we know from that Word.
But from that Word we do know something of the
moral conditions of the future life. About one
thing there cannot be any doubt ; and that is, that
the only thing we carry over the line with us is our-
selves. What we are goes nakedly into that world,
without any of the disguises or deceptions with
which circumstances invest character here. " We
brought nothing into this world, and it is certain
we can carry nothing out." Whatever price you
pay for the world, you leave the world behind you
when you pass the gate of death. If, then, that
is all you have gotten, what do you carry into
the next world ? You have given your life for the
world. You cannot give it, and have it too. The

34 DOES IT PAY?

world has passed away, and you go to face God —
with what? The only thing that has any hold on
the future is the Christ-like self, trained in the
school of faith and self-denial and ministry ; and
if you have not that, if you have parted with that
for the world, what have you? What shall it
profit you if you shall have gained the whole
world, and lost your life? I give you Christ's
teaching, not mine. He knew both worlds. He
has told you the solemn truth betimes, that you
might not find it out only when the mischief was
done ; and if, when you get into that new life, this
truth shall come to you as a new discovery, rest
assured it will bring pain and anguish with it.

Christ asks you this morning, " Does it pay ? "
He appeals to fact, to your observation, to your
common sense. Does it pay? Is it a good bar-
gain ? " What shall a man be profited if he shall
gain the whole world, and forfeit his life ? or
what shall a man give in exchange for his life ? "
Or let another evangelist give you the same truth
in his way : " For what is a man profited if he gain
the whole world, and lose or forfeit his own self? "
Is it a good bargain ? — a world that passes away,
a desire that passes away ; an unsatisfying world ;
a world that carries in itself the seeds of dan-
ger and disaster ; a world that proves a hard and
cruel master, and gives slavery instead of free-
dom. All this for a life inspired and guided by
Christ, a life in communion with heaven, a life
rich in helpfulness and love ; a faith which con-
quers the world, and makes you superior to its

DOES IT PAY? 35

chances and changes and sorrows ; a hope of eter-
nal rest and eternal life, — is it a good bargain ?

My young friends, I would save you from this
fearful mistake. Christ would save you; and
therefore his call is strong and urgent to you to-
day : " Seek ye first the kingdom of God and his
righteousness." You tell me there is much good
in the world, much that may rightly be enjoyed ;
that God made the world to be used. That is
all true. God did make the world for you to use
and enjoy, but under his direction ; and it may be
well for you to remember, that, setting aside all
considerations of the future life, you will make
the most of the world by following Christ. You
will make the world your servant, instead of your
master. You will enjoy its lawful pleasures with-
out a sting, instead of being ridden and driven by
it as by a demon. The alternative of this fear-
ful purchase we have been considering is before
you. Christ stands beside you in the market-
place, and asks what it will profit you to gain the
world and lose yourself, and then says to you,
" Follow me ! Yes, along the way of the cross !
yes, leaving self behind! but my yoke is easy,
and my burden is light : you shall find rest unto
your souls ; you shall not walk in darkness ; you
shall not want for the best of society. Lo ! I am
with you alway, even unto the end of the world."
Self may die, but the world will be the richer for
the fruit of a ministering life ; and beyond is rest,
reward, heaven.

III.

THE SINGLE NEED.

III.

THE SINGLE NEED.

" But the Lord answered and said unto her, Martha, Martha,
thou art anxious and troubled about many things : but one thing
is needful : for Mary hath chosen the good part, which shall not
be taken away from her." — Luke x. 41, 42.

MARTHA was determined to provide a fine
entertainment on this occasion. She was
doubtless a notable housewife, and, not unnatu-
rally, a little proud of it ; and she had with her,
to-day, her dearest and most honored guest, and
was bent on setting before him her best, and in her
best style. So there was much anxious discussion,
we may suppose, about what dishes should be pre-
pared, and not a little worry about their being
properly cooked and served, and that the honored
guest should have what might please him most.
It was a loving impulse on her part, and our Lord
did not fail to appreciate it. All natures do not
express their affection in the same way. What a
blessed fact it is that our Master and Judge sees
the love behind the differences, and tolerates the
differences for the love's sake !

Mary, though her quiet sitting at Jesus' feet was
in strange contrast, apparently, with Martha's

40 THE SINGLE NEED.

bustling activity and worry, showed, on other
occasions, that she was not indisposed to active
ministry. It was Mary who brought the flask of
spikenard, and anointed the Lord's feet at that
same table ; and the words in this story seem to
indicate that she had been assisting Martha in her
preparations before Jesus came : but her finer
spiritual instinct discerned that there was a better
way of entertaining him than by feasting him.
Custom in all ages, I know, has prescribed a feast
as an appropriate way of honoring a guest ; and in
one sense it is so. You give a man a mark of
your confidence and respect by inviting him to
your table ; but you do not, after all, if you will
think of it, show him the highest mark of respect
by inviting him to a splendid and formal banquet,
assuming that he is best entertained by the grati-
fication of his appetite. You pay him a higher
token of your regard when you invite him to par-
take of your informal family meal ; taking him
into your private life, and assuming that he cares
more for your society than for your fare. Mary, I
repeat, discerned this fact, with a loving woman's
quick perception ; and so she was less anxious than
Martha about the details of the feast. She had
done all that she thought necessary for comfort
and decency ; and she valued her guest enough to
desire to get something more out of his visit than
the mere pleasure of seeing him eat, or the gratifi-
cation of having him praise her viands. Call it a
kind of selfishness, if you will ; indeed, Martha had
no hesitation in calling it so : it was nevertheless

THE SINGLE NEED. 41

true, that Mary was bent on enjoying as well as
entertaining her guest. Surely we are all selfish
to that extent. She knew the blessing of Jesus'
presence in the house. Are there not some Marys
to-day, who, if he should come into their houses,
would well-nigh forget altogether to lay the table,
in their eagerness to hear the words of him who
spake as never man spake ? Let us hope so, at
least ; because there can be no doubt that Mary's
attitude was the more pleasing of the two to the
Lord, that her spiritual instinct was keener, and
her spiritual fibre finer, than Martha's. The Lord's
gentle and affectionate rebuke of Martha, — so
gentle, so playful I had almost said, as to rob it of
its sting, — and his commendation of Mary, set
that beyond question, and give us our lesson to-
day, — " Martha, thou art anxious and troubled
about many things : but one thing is needful : for
Mary hath chosen the good part, which shall not be
taken away from her."

In the first place, observe that Christ's words
imply no disapproval of active service as against a
contemplative or meditative life. It has been a fa-
vorite fancy to make these two characters typical,
— the one of the active, and the other of the con-
templative, life ; but the fancy is not borne out by
fact, nor is it the contrast between these two that
is present to the Saviour's mind. It is not Martha's
activity that he is rebuking, but her anxiety and
distraction. He who went about doing good, and
who said, " My meat is to do the will of Him that
sent me," was not the one to rebuke active minis-

42 THE SINGLE NEED.

try. The point of his rebuke lies in enforcing
the pursuit of one thing as against many things.
Martha is distracted and bustling about many
things : Mary has chosen one thing, — a good part
which shall not be taken away from her, — and that
thing alone is needful. It may have been that the
peculiar form of the expression grew out of the
feast itself. Martha has provided, with much
worry and care, many things to eat. To sustain
life, only one thing is absolutely needful ; or, as
some read it, " There is need of few things, or of
one." Be this as it may, the lesson is plain : the
life of the soul depends on one thing ; the whole
energy of the soul should be concentrated upon
that.

That accords with the Saviour's teaching else-
where : " Leave all, and follow me ! seek first one
thing, — the kingdom of God ! " The man in
the parable, when he had lighted on the hidden
treasure, concentrated all his desire and all his
fortune on that one field ; and, selling all that he
had, he bought it. The pearl-merchant, who was
seeking many goodly pearls, at last sold every
thing for one wonderful gem. All the law is
summed up in one word. Now, if we will only
think of it, we shall see that just that simplicity
is what we are seeking everywhere. Wherever
we have a variety of facts or details to deal with,
we are not satisfied until we find some law or
some principle, some one thing which includes
them all. We see the stone fall to the ground
when it leaves our hand, and the planets held

THE SINGLE NEED. 43

in their orbits. We are delighted when we can
group these two facts, apparently so unrelated,
under the one law of gravitation. When work
involves a multitude of details requiring a mul-
titude of separate forces, we aim to find one
single force which will take up all the others
into itself, and do their work. Suppose a man
who had never seen a great machine-shop, and
who knew nothing of the power of steam or water,
were set down in a great hall full of lathes and
looms and circular saws, and required to set the
machinery in motion : how many men he would
call in ! how many separate contrivances he would
apply to each machine ! how he would bustle about
from wheel to wheel, from lathe to lathe, now
heaving away at a great trip-hammer, now cutting
his ringers on a circular saw, now turning round
the driving-wheel of a lathe ! And at this point
the experienced engineer comes in, and laughs as
he sees the poor man's perplexity, and says to him,
"My friend, all this trouble is unnecessary: only
one thing is needful ; " and he slips a belt over a
drum, and pulls a lever, and behold ! the whole hall
is in a whirl, — lathes, saws, trip-hammers, all in
motion, without a hand on any of them. Or, here
is a schoolboy with his arithmetic before him, and
a whole page of " examples " to work out : and he
takes each example by itself, and tries to think his
way through it ; trying all sorts of experiments,
applying one method to one, and another to another,
and getting more confused every minute. Present-
ly the teacher looks over his shoulder at his slate

44 THE SINGLE NEED.

covered with a chaotic mass of figures, and glances
at the boy's hot and troubled face, and says to
him, " You are taking a good deal of unnecessary
trouble. This is not as hard as it looks : only one
thing is needful ; all these examples are illustra-
tions of one law." And he sits down, and explains
a simple principle to the lad ; and then the work
becomes a delight. The boy has a clew in his hand
which leads him straight through the whole laby-
rinth of figures. He turns from the multitude of
details to the principle, and finds that the details
arrange themselves, and the answer comes right
every time.

So that there is nothing arbitrary or unnatural,
or even unfamiliar, in the gospel's summing itself
in one thing, and concentrating men's attention on
that. It is evident, as we have already seen, that
the gospel illustrates this great truth of centrali-
zation. It is intensely centralized. Whether we
regard it as a system, as a life in man, as a code of
laws, as a theory of morals, — from all these points
of view, the lines run straight to Christ. As a
system, it centres in his person ; as a life, in man :
its moving forces are love and faith toward Christ ;
its ultimate aim, conformity to the mind and will
of Christ : as a code of laws, Christ is the fulfil-
ment of the law, its perfect illustration ; as a
theory of morals, it is summed up in obedience to
Christ. It keeps this one figure constantly before
us. It groups all details round him. God's great
gift to the world is Jesus Christ ; and with him, he
gives us all things. Not that he adds all things to

THE SINGLE NEED. 45

the gift of Christ as another and distinct expres-
sion of his love, but rather that Christ carries all
other things with him in the nature of the case.
The greater gift takes up all the minor gifts into
itself — includes them. When a man buys an
estate of so many acres, he does not ask for sepa-
rate titles for the woodland and the pasture and
the streams and the mines. He wants one title to
the estate. He pays so much ; and then, if there
is gold or coal or an oil-well on the estate, that is
his. The purchase of the estate gives him com-
mand of all its possibilities, whether apparent or
latent. And so, when God would lead a man to
spiritual power and riches by the most direct road,
he leads him to Christ. He says : " Receive him
implicitly. Only that one thing is needful; the
rest follows, the rest is contained in him, all things
are in him, — all power, all grace, all wisdom, all
spiritual possibilities of every kind ; and, therefore,
when you receive him, you receive all these things
with him." That is Paul's simple logic. "All
things are yours because ye are Christ's, all things
are Christ's because he is God's ; and therefore, in
Christ, God becomes yours, and God is all in all."
If this be so, shall we be surprised to hear Christ
insisting upon the one thing ? to hear him say, —
" Seek ye first the kingdom of God, and his right-
eousness ; and all these things shall be added unto
you"?

Now, this seems simple ; but practically it is not
so easily realized as we might expect. It is the
higher spiritual outlook which reveals this sim-

46 THE SINGLE NEED.

plicity and centralization of the gospel. When
you are set down for the first time in a great and
strange city, the streets are a labyrinth to you ;
and when you strike out into the city, and begin
to explore it, you get no sense of system in the
arrangement of the streets : you lose yourself in
all sorts of by-ways and blind alleys, and your
walk is a constant succession of experiments. But
when you climb to the top of some cathedral-tower,
and look down, the confusion resolves itself. You
see the central square or the market-place, and
how all the streets have a certain relation to that.
So it is the higher outlook, I repeat, which reveals
how the gospel is centred. Lower down, it pre-
sents great possibilities of confusion ; because the
gospel, in one aspect, is a thing of infinite details.
It is a system framed for life, and for life on every
imaginable side, and for application to every possi-
bility of life. It embraces an immense range of
duties and attainments. Life along its whole line
touches the moral and spiritual kingdom. And
when a man confronts the gospel on this side, —
and that is the side on which, perhaps, the majority
of men approach it, — he is appalled. Like Mar-
tha, he becomes cumbered and anxious with the
thought of much serving. He does not see that
the gospel is any thing else than service, and ser-
vice touching an infinite variety of details, and
service tested by a perfect moral standard. He is
occupied with the thought of how he can deal
with this mass of details ; and it does not at once
occur to him that he may get at the details of

THE SINGLE NEED. 47

service by a shorter process, that he may be placed
at a point from which the details will all arrange
themselves, that he may come under the power of
an impulse which will make duty meat instead of
drudgery, and carry all duties and all services
easily along with it. The sooner that man gets
through Christianity as a system, to Christ as a
friend and helper, the better for him. Suppose a
boy taken from his home at an early age, and sent
to school in a foreign land. He has staid there
year after year, until his impressions of the faces
and voices and incidents of his home have well-
nigh faded out. Occasionally some one visits him
who has lately seen his home, and brings him mes-
sages from parents and friends. The boy is natu-
rally eager to know all about that home. " Tell
me how father and mother look. Tell me how
large my brother has grown. Tell me how the
house is furnished, and whether the trees are still
in such a place." And the visitor says, "Your
home is a charming place. Your parents are loved
and honored everywhere, and their household is
ordered with the utmost system and precision : no
drones are allowed there. Each son and daughter
has specified duties. Every thing must be done
on time, and well and thoroughly done." And as
such reports reach him again and again, the boy
becomes troubled and anxious at the prospect of
going home. He is afraid he cannot fit himself
to that exact and beautiful system, that he cannot
meet all those requirements, that he will bring
reproof and displeasure upon himself by inadver-

48 THE SINGLE NEED.

tency ; and so all the pleasure gradually fades out
of the prospect of going home, until he comes
actually to dread it, and would rather stay in
the far-off land. Home has taken on, in his mind,
the character of a well-conducted workhouse.
But oh, how little he suspects the joy and expec-
tation and longing which pervade that home in
the near prospect of his coming ! He cannot see
the preparations which busy the mother's hands
from morning till night for his welcome and com-
fort. He does not suspect the father's nervous,
growing restlessness as the day draws near for
the arrival of the ship. And at last it comes.
The carriage drives up to the door : the boy leaps
out, and is clasped in his father's arms, and his
young head bedewed with such tears as only a
mother can shed, and is led into the light and
cheer and hilarity of home ; and, in a moment,
all that dread and anxious care which have been
oppressing his heart for months are gone. The
atmosphere of love in which he finds himself, a
single glance at the faces of his parents, dispel
those false pictures of his fancy like a dream. It
does not take him long to see that the household
is well-ordered, that every thing moves like clock-
work, that his brothers and sisters are trained to
implicit obedience. But those things do not trou-
ble him any more. He sees them all through the
medium of his parents' love ; and he knows by in-
stinct, that under the shadow of that home, under
the guidance of those parents, he will find a place
in the home-system, and a round of duties which

THE SINGLE NEED. 49

will be a joy. One look assures him of all pos-
sible wisdom for his direction, all possible conces-
sion to his weakness, all possible tolerance for his
mistakes. He is in his own home, girt round
by love, — a happy son. Duty and fidelity will
spring as naturally, and will regulate themselyes
as sweetly, as the growth of a flower.

The first thing with us all, the one thing, is to get
home to Christ, — not merely to read about him or
to speculate about his character, but to get face to
face with him. A great many things will take care
of themselves then which distract and make us
anxious now, and lay us open to the rebuke which
Martha received. There is a law of duty, with
many provisions and touching many things; but
when shall we learn to go first behind the law to
Christ himself, and sit like Mary at his feet, and
learn the lesson of duty as he shall expound it to
us ? When shall we learn that duty, in its multi-
tude of forms, becomes a new and a simpler and a
sweeter thing the moment it is seen in the light
of love for Christ ? Oh, how this theory of many
things to be done dominates and rides us ! how rest-
less and fretted we get under it ! so much to do !
so much to do ! so fearful that we shall not over-
take our work ! so afraid of our Father's displeasure
if our work falls into arrear ! each day a wearying
strain to accomplish so much ! as if Christ were
no more than a taskmaster, and our Father's house
only a workhouse ! We are sincere about it too :
we want to do God's will, we want to please Christ ;
but we get so little comfort out cf it ! Christian

50 THE SINGLE NEED.

life is a life of duty and of service ; but I have yet
to learn where, in the New Testament, Christ puts
service as a perpetual burden. I do hear him say-
ing, " My yoke is easy, and my burden is light."
Somehow I have gotten the impression, in my study
of the Gospels and of the life of Christ, that service
may be a joy. Even in lower regions, I think we
have all known cases of men's enjoying their daily
task, going with delight to their studio or their
library or their factory ; and if one can be happy
in these daily tasks, why must the service of Christ
be drudgery ? It is not so, and the secret and the
correction of the mistake alike lie in these words
of the Master. We contemplate too many things :
we range all along the vast circumference of duty,
instead of striking direct for the centre ; we live
by law, which takes up duty in detail, instead of by
love, which masses and carries all details. But one
thing is needful, — to receive Christ into our life
with all our hearts, with complete self-abandon-
ment. This will change us from slaves into sons.
" To as many as received Him, to them gave He
power to become sons of God." This will not re-
lieve us of service, but it will make our service the
service of sons ; and you know, without any words
of mine, the difference between the service of a son
and of a servant.

Our religious education, and the circumstances
amid which we live, make it important that we
should give heed to this truth. The word which
Christ uses in his rebuke to Martha is the same
which he employs in the exhortation : " Be not anx-

THE SINGLE NEED. 51

ions for your life." It is the word which means
dividing, distracting care, — care which divides the
heart from God ; care which pulls us many differ-
ent ways ; care which sets its stamp on our lives,
and makes them fussy and turbulent. And the
great danger in the religious life of people in a great
city like this, is distraction. Duty pulls so many
different ways : there are so many calls to help and
to achieve, so many shining opportunities of doing
good, that it is very easy to foster the Martha type
of life here. And then, too, there is, to many
spirits, a fascination about doing. They love to be
active, and activity appeals to the world as a good
thing in itself. The tendency is to look upon a
man who is constantly busy about a great number
of things as a useful and important man. And the
busy man knows that, and his self-importance is
flattered by it; and close by this lies the great
danger of making activity cover the whole ground
of religion, and of sinking the equally important
requirements of prayer and meditation and self-
examination. And a man who lives by this theory
will, spiritually, deteriorate very fast. That say-
ing, " To labor is to pray," is a very pretty little
phrase, and carries a grain of truth ; but its popular
interpretation is, that work is a substitute for prayer,
which is sheer nonsense. Our Lord was the busiest
of men while on earth ; but he retired often to the
mountains, and to other secret places, to commune
with the Father. Again let it be repeated, — it can-
not be repeated too often, — the one thing needful
in the Christian life, as in the solar system, is, that

52 THE SINGLE NEED.

it be properly centred ; and as, in the solar system,
two forces are necessary, — the one to hold the heav-
enly bodies to the centre, the other to send them
wheeling in space to do their office of enlighten-
ing the world and regulating times and seasons, —
so, in Christian life, prayer is the centripetal force,
holding and drawing the man to Jesus Christ, his
true centre : while the impulse to work is the cen-
trifugal force, sending him out along the orbit of
holy ministry. These forces must be kept balanced.
If a man does nothing but pray and meditate, his life
becomes morbid and unprofitable. If he does noth-
ing but work, he loses his hold on Christ, and swings
farther and farther from the centre which regulates
and warms and enlightens him. He gets out of his
true orbit, and becomes distracted amid a multitude
of duties lying in other orbits, and is deceived in
thinking that he is one of God's lights in the world,
when he more resembles an errant marsh-fire.
Any thing which breaks the conscious connection
of faith and love with Christ is one of those dis-
tractions against which Christ so kindly warned
Martha, no matter whether it be good work in
itself, or even work done in the name of Christ.
Much of the work done in Christ's name, if we are
to believe Christ himself, will not stand the test of
the last day. " Many will say to me in that day,
Have we not prophesied in thy name, and in thy
name have cast out devils, and in thy name done
many wonderful works ? And then will I profess
unto them, I never knew you."

The intense centring of the life on Christ does

THE SINGLE NEED. 53

not divorce it from service, as we have seen. It
generates service, but it regulates service ; nor
does it deprive the life of variety. No life is less
monotonous than one which is in conscious, close
communion with Christ. Paul said, "I deter-
mined to know nothing among you save Christ."
Yet what a variety and range of activity that life
presents ; and withal, what a simplicity and exqui-
site regulation of activity. There is no clashing
or confusion of duties. He simply walks day by
day after Christ, and the duties meet him in due
order. There is no anxiety about strength, even
in that sickly and much-burdened man; Christ
has engaged to provide for that : there is no trou-
ble about methods ; Christ lays them down : there
is no fretting about visible success ; he is not
responsible for success, only for duty. The excel-
lency of the power is of God, not of him; and
the key to all this is one thing, — he tells us what
it is when he comes to the end, — one thing which
he had held all through, while every thing else
had been swept away : " I have kept the faith ! "
and, instead of being cumbered with much serv-
ing, we hear him saying to the Philippians, — to
whom, perhaps more than to any other church, he
revealed his heart, — "I have learned, in whatso-
ever state I am, therewith to be content. In every
thing and in all things have I learned the secret
both to be filled and to be hungry, both to abound
and to be in want. I can do all things through
Christ that strengthens me."

On this, then, let us fix our thought, — one thing

54 THE SINGLE NEED.

is needful. Christian belief, Christian life, Chris-
tian experience, are simple ; but to realize that
simplicity, either in theory or in practice, they
must be viewed from their true centre. If the
gospel is approached on the side of mere duty, —
the duties which we have to do, the spiritual
attainments we have to make, — it is a mass of
confusion. If, on the other hand, we go straight
to Christ, receive him into our hearts, gather up
our whole life into simple, loving, believing con-
secration to him, keep ourselves by faith and
prayer in continual contact with him, always
within the sound of his voice, always hearing,
pondering, and practising his words, — then the
confusion resolves itself, and duty and place and
attainment will take care of themselves. We" too
often act as if God had merely recognized us as
his children, and given us the freedom of his
house, and then left us to ourselves to work out
our life as best we could. That is not God's way.
When he makes us his children through faith in
Christ Jesus, he assumes the care of our life in
all its details. He not only turns us loose in his
house : he goes with us into every corner, and
shows us its treasures. He not only gives us the
freedom of his domain : he assigns each of us his
plot of ground, and stands by us while we try to
sow the seed and water the growths, and teaches
us how to be workers for and with him ; and as
for our care, all that tends to distract and cumber
and confuse us he bids us cast it all on him.
Christian life, I say, is simple. It is summed up in

THE SINGLE NEED. 55

one thing, — " Follow me ! " It may seem to us
that that is a little support on which to cast such
a burden and problem as life is to most of us, but
we shall do well to try it. Day before yesterday
I had occasion to go to the lower part of the city
by the elevated railroad ; and, as I got out at
Hanover Square, I looked down upon the street
far below, and a thought something like this went
through my mind: supposing that, without any
knowledge of the existence and mode of working
of an elevated railway, I had been placed on this
train while asleep or unconscious, and had awak-
ened at this station, and been told that I must get
down to that street. I get out of the train, and
find myself on a narrow platform. I look down
on either side, and say, "No way down there,
except by being dashed to pieces." Instinctively
I follow those in front of me. Steps, but the
door is shut: no getting down there. I follow
still. A door, but it opens into an enclosure. I
follow still. Another door, and there are steps
which lead me safely and easily down to the
street. I might have stood still, and distracted
myself with a dozen devices for getting down. I
might have gone bustling about, looking for a rope
or a ladder. There was only one thing needful,
and that was, to follow those who knew the way.
So in our Christian experience, one thing is need-
ful, — the part which Mary chose, to hear Jesus'
words and to follow him. A good many times in
the course of this life we shall be puzzled about
how to get up or down or out, sadly puzzled if

56 THE SINGLE NEED.

we think it our business to extricate ourselves ;
but those many things are not our business. The
puzzle will resolve itself in clue time if we simply
hold to the one thing, — following Christ. When
you gave yourself to him, you took him in place
of all human skill and wisdom, for every emer-
gency. These things no longer concern you. He
careth for you, and they may all be laid on him.

The pertinent, practical, pressing question re-
mains. If one thing is needful, if that one thing
is a good part, is it yours? Face the question.
Where is your life centred to-day? Have you
many aims, or one aim? One master, and only
one, is needful. No man can serve two. Who is
your master ? The great object of life is one, — to
be like Christ : is that your object, and are all
minor objects taken up in that ? or is your mind
divided between many objects ? The claims of the
world are many and pressing, and seemingly im-
portant ; but in the face of the teeming, crowding
throng of worldly cares and labors and ambitions,
is Christ, saying, " One thing is needful ! I am
that one thing ! " Which voice will you hear ?

IV.

FACING GOD.

IV.
FACING GOD.

" I have set the Lord always before me : because he is at ray
right hand, I shall not be moved." — Ps. xvi. 8.

CONVICTIONS are of two kinds. They are
born of emergencies and of experience. The
former are instinctive, springing into life full
grown: the latter grow and mature slowly. A
ship strikes a rock, and begins to sink. The con-
viction of danger and of possible destruction takes
shape at once in the mind of every passenger.
This is the conviction of emergency. You are im-
pressed with the amiable qualities of a man ; you
desire his friendship ; you are prepared to admire
and trust him : but that is not conviction. After
years of intimacy, in which you have proved his
powers, experienced his constancy and devotion,
have always found him true and brave and pure,
you are convinced of his worth. It becomes to
you a fixed fact, which you unconsciously as-
sume, as you do gravitation or the succession of
night and day. Belief is not conviction, except
in the germ. Conviction is faith in fruition, and
fruition takes time. Belief may entertain reserva-

59

60 FACING GOD.

tions, or hold itself subject to possibilities: convic-
tion knows no reservation. Belief grasps : convic-
tion possesses. Belief may run up into conviction.
All well-grounded belief does ultimately. Belief
may serve a temporary purpose while conviction is
maturing, just as the cable serves while the bridge
is being built. All that is real and valuable in
belief ultimately passes into conviction, and is
taken up into it. As a young Christian, you be-
lieved the Bible to be the word of God, and the
only infallible rule of faith and practice. You
believed it on authority, on the testimony of your
parents and teachers ; and that belief was enough
to make you accept the Bible as your rule of
life, and strive to keep its precepts. But that
belief was probably disturbed. Authority was not
enough for you. Questions were raised which set
you thinking, doubting, and investigating. To-day
you believe the Bible, but your belief has grown
into conviction. Your belief on simple author-
ity has given place to a deeper sentiment, based
on the experience of years, in which the Bible has
proved its power to instruct and comfort and en-
lighten you. I remember going, in company with
some brother ministers, to visit an aged clergyman
then past his eightieth year. As we bade him fare-
well, he laid his hand on the Bible, and said sol-
emnly, " There, brethren, there is our authority :
there is our guide." A young minister might have
said that, and have believed it; but the words
would have lacked the emphasis imparted by those
long years, and that stormy life wrought out under

FACING GOD. 61

the guidance and inspiration of the word of God.
We all felt that every fibre of the old man's being
went into those words.

Our text to-day is the utterance of such con-
viction as this. When I say the text, I mean the
whole psalm ; for this text gives the key-note to
the psalm. It is not the exclamation of a man to
whom a truth has come as a flash : it is the delib-
erate outcome of a long and varied retrospect. It
has a life behind it. The man is convinced that he
shall not be moved; that he may safely and heart-
ily rejoice ; that in the unseen world, as here, he
will be safe and happy : and this conviction is the
result of a life in which God has been continually
before his face. He is not kindled into confidence
and gratitude by a single act of Divine Providence.
The providence has extended over his entire life.
The Lord has fixed his place in life, and has pro-
vided for his support : " The Lord is the portion of
mine inheritance and of my cup." What Christ
means when he says, "I am the bread of life,"
David means by the words, " The Lord is the por-
tion of my cup ; " and in like manner he speaks
in the familiar psalm : " Thou preparest a table
before me : my cup runneth over." Moreover, the
Lord has not suffered his enemies to deprive him
of his portion : " Thou maintainest my lot. Thou
preparest my table in the presence of mine ene-
mies." And he has found it not only safe but
pleasant to dwell in God's place, and to be fed by
God. " The lines have fallen unto me in pleasant
places." The portion of territory which God's

62 FACING GOD.

measuring-line has marked off for him has been
a goodly heritage. Nor has he ever wanted for
good advice. Jehovah has given him counsel;
and with such an experience behind him, we are
not surprised to hear him say, " My heart is glad,
my soul rejoiceth. This poor flesh of mine must
die ; but God, who has cared for me all along, will
not give me up as a prey to the grave : he will
point out to me the way of life. He who has
been always with me, will continue to be with me ;
and in his presence is fulness of joy. He is at my
right hand, and at his right hand are pleasures
forevermore."

The secret of all this rejoicing and confidence,
I repeat, is in our text. David has set the Lord
always before him; and this is his reward, as it
may be ours. Let us look now more closely at
this thought of having God always before us.

It is of the greatest importance what that is
which is continually before us. That which is
constantly in a man's eye must help very largely
to shape him. I have heard a very significant
criticism on a certain picture, to the effect, that,
though it was a good piece of artistic work, it was
not a good picture to live with. You would not
wish to have hanging up in your sitting-room, and
constantly in sight of your children, a picture of
Herodias with the head of John the Baptist, or of
a crazed mother in the act of murdering her babe.
You try to keep pictures of wholesome subjects as
well as of beautiful forms before your children's
eyes; because you know that they are insensibly

FACING GOD. 63

educated by familiarity with such things. In an
age of few books, men and women learned mostly
by the eye. It was not wholly nor mostly idola-
try which filled the old churches with pictures.
The visitor to St. Mark's, in Venice, may follow
for himself the footsteps of the earlier catechumen ;
passing into the Christian temple through a vesti-
bule of Old-Testament history wrought in mosaic
pictures, and then reading, on the walls and domes
within, the truths of crucifixion, resurrection, the
baptism of the Spirit and the coming of the Lord
to judgment, — all arranged in the order of Chris-
tian thought. The peasant who passed over the old
wooden bridge over the torrent at Lucerne had
daily before him, in the painted compartments of
the bridge, a reminder of that other stream which
all must cross sooner or later. Nature sets her
mark on character. If her surroundings are gloomy
and savage, they impart a sombre tone to the men
who live among them. Men tend to be narrowed
or broadened by their daily task. The man who
has columns of figures forever before him may
easily degenerate into a mere calculating machine.
If the thing which is constantly before us is larger
and better than ourselves, its hourly presence re-
bukes our littleness and our badness, and works to
assimilate us to itself. If it is worse than our-
selves, it draws downward. There was philosophy
as well as enthusiasm in the apostle's exhortation
to run, looking unto Jesus, and in Paul keeping
his eye on the prize of his high calling, and reach-
ing forth to that which is before.

64 FACING GOD.

But it may be asked, Is not God always before
us? can we help having the Lord always before
us ? Assuredly we can. The Psalmist evidently
thinks so. He does not regard it as inevitable
that we should have the Lord always before us.
On the contrary, he speaks of those who hasten
after, or, literally, take unto themselves another
God. Both their course and his are matters of
choice. He does not say, "The Lord is always
before me," but " I have set him always before me."
His own will, his own act, have had something to
do with the matter. He has been at pains to bring
God into the foreground, and to keep him there
always. And there is nothing strange in this ; be-
cause God manifests himself in the world, because
every common bush is afire with him, it does not
follow that men recognize the fact. There is
abundance of sweet music in the world, but there
are multitudes of people to whom it means no more
than the rumble of the carts in the street. There
are men who live all their lives amid the grandest
scenery, but who see in it nothing but so much
stone and timber : men to whom a great picture is
meaningless, and literature as dumb as the pyra-
mids. So, it is not strange if men should not see
the God who puts himself before them in his Word
and in his providences, in every star and flower and
lightning flash. A sense must be educated to see
God. The apostle is only stating what is a famil-
iar fact to us in other departments, when he says
" The natural man discerneth not the things of the
Spirit of God. They are foolishness unto him.

FACING GOD. 65

He cannot know them because they are spiritually
discerned." It is quite as likely, to say the least,
that a man's spiritual sense should be uncultivated
and dormant, and give him no knowledge of that
vast spiritual economy which touches him every-
where, as that his eye or his ear should be unim-
pressed by pictures or harmony. A babe has the
organs of vision, but nevertheless he must learn
to see.

This blindness towards God is a fact of history
and of common experience. We say, for instance,
as we read the history of Israel, that such mani-
festations of divine glory and power could not
fail to impress them : they were so mighty, so ter-
rible, so unquestionable. And yet they did fail.
The dividing of the Red Sea, and the lightnings
and thunders of Sinai, were followed by the fren-
zied dance round the golden calf. We say that the
person and miracles of Christ were adapted to con-
vince the most incredulous ; but they did not, as we
see : and we hear Christ himself saying, " If I had
not come and spoken unto them, they had not had
sin : but now they have no excuse for their sin."

Thus, then, God will not be, in any true sense,
before our face unless we set him there. It is
a matter which involves our determination and
effort, a matter of special training and practice.
There is a spiritual inertia to be overcome : there
is to be corrected the perverse tendency of a na-
ture which sets any thing before it rather than God.
That bar of steel does not point naturally to the
pole. Balance it on a pivot, and it will point south,

66 FACING GOD.

east, or west, as the case may be. It must be acted
upon from without. It must have magnetic virtue
imparted to it ; and then, and not till then, will it
keep the north always before it. Man is not nat-
urally religious. Naturally he does not point God-
ward. No quality in him swings him inevitably
round towards God. He must be set that way ; or,
rather, he must set himself that way, under the
divine power which comes down upon his will, and
magnetizes it, and gives it its eternal direction.

You will observe further, that this having God
before the face requires persistency. It was not
enough to bring God once or twice into the line of
vision : he was to be kept there. The Psalmist
tells us not only of an act, but of a habit : " I
have set the Lord always before my face." Men
often claim that they are susceptible to religious
impressions, and are disposed to flatter themselves
on the fact ; and it is a familiar enough fact, — it
would be strange if it were not so, — that God
often brings the face of the most unsusceptible
man round to him by some display of his power,
or by some stroke of his providence. Jonah tried
to run away from God, but met him on the way to
Tarshish : Balaam turned his back on God and his
face toward Moab ; but the angel of God met him
in a narrow place, where there was no chance of
turning back. The impressions which men receive
under such circumstances are vivid and truthful :
the trouble is, that they do not expand into perma-
nent convictions. When God sets himself before
a man's face, it is in order to make the man set

FACING GOD. 67

God continually before his face. The crisis means
an experience. A compass-needle would be to a
sailor of no more account than a knitting-needle
if it were made to point northward only by some
violent shock : it is the fact of its ahvays pointing
thither that gives it its value.

It is this fact of persistency which gives value
to David's saying : what he tells us is the story of
a man who has become familiar with an object by
long looking. It is not the kind of a story which
Jacob would have told the morning after the vision
at Bethel, but rather of the kind which Enoch
would have told on the eve of his translation, — the
story, not of a vision of God, but of a walk with
God. When a man has shut himself up to one
thing as the source of his strength and happiness,
he will find out a great deal about that thing.
Robinson Crusoe, when he had once made up his
mind that his life must be confined to his little
island, set himself to discover its resources, and
found in it a multitude of things which he never
would have known were there if he had been ex-
pecting to sail away in a week or two. In that
event he would have used his island only for the
food and shelter of the day. That is the way
in which many people deal with God : they turn
their faces towards him when they have nowhere
else to turn. They use his bounty when their own
supplies fail. As soon as they have something else
to look at, they turn their faces from God ; and it
does not take much to turn them, either. A silver
dollar held before your eyes will conceal the whole

t>5 FACING GOD.

orb of the sun. You can shut out an entire land-
scape with a finger ; and it is amazing, likewise,
what small things will divert men from God,
what a little temptation will shut out an immense
range of duty, responsibility, and privilege. Esau
was the rightful inheritor of a splendid destiny ;
but a coarse dish of red lentils shut out the whole
brilliant future, and his birthright went for a mess
of pottage. Our Psalmist fixes his gaze on God :
nothing is to come between God and him. He has
taken counsel with his soul, and said unto God,
" Thou art my Lord. I have no good beyond thee.
I have set the Lord always before my face."

And one who thus keeps God always before him
makes discoveries, and many of them. David, in
the twenty-seventh Psalm, declares that he has
desired one thing, and will seek after that ; but
that one thing evidently includes a great deal for
him. It will reveal to him the beauty of the
Lord ; it will give him opportunity to ask ques-
tions of divine wisdom ; it will afford him a hiding-
place in time of trouble, and a means of triumph
over his enemies. Let us, then, note a few of the
many things which a man finds in God by keeping
him always before his face.

He finds himself revealed. In the Shinto tem-
ples in Japan the shrines contain no altars, pul-
pits, or pictures, but only a circular steel mirror.
What it means is not known ; but it would be no
inappropriate symbol in a Christian shrine, to set
forth the self-revealing power of the word of God.
Nor is the symbol without its warrant in Scripture.

FACING GOD. 69

You remember that James draws a picture of a
man beholding his natural face in a glass, consult-
ing his mirror for some temporary purpose of ar-
ranging his dress or hair ; and then going his way,
and forgetting all about it. And he puts this
picture in contrast with another, of a man stoop-
ing down, and looking attentively, and fixing the
impression of what he sees, so as to keep it always
before his face. This man, who looks steadfastly
into God's perfect law, and translates what he
sees there into daily practice, this man " shall be
blessed in his doing," keeping God always before
his face. The Psalmist tells us he receives coun-
sel, and that, not only by way of direct communi-
cation, but through the working of his own mind :
" I will bless the Lord, who hath given me coun-
sel : my reins also (that is, my heart) instruct me
in the night seasons." An inner spiritual wisdom
develops in the quiet meditation and communion
with God in the night season. "The night sea-
son," as some one has aptly said, " which the sin-
ner chooses for his sins, is the hour when believers
hear the voices of the heavenly life within them-
selves." The man who studies God, studies self at
the same time ; the man who steadfastly follows
Christ, learns as much about self as he learns of
Christ. Self-knowledge is the hardest kind of
knowledge. The thing which is identified with
our interest and pleasure is not always the thing
which we know best. We shut our eyes to its im-
perfections ; we look at it only on the side where
it ministers to our gain or enjoyment ; we do not

70 FACING GOD.

like to pick flaws in the self which we love ; we
refuse to see that it is fallible and proud, and
otherwise faulty : it is ourself, and we stand by it.
But when Christ persuades us to deny and lay
aside self, he puts self in a position where we can
study it from without ; where we can weigh and
test it by higher standards ; where we can set it,
with all its greed and conceit and sophistry and
littleness, beside the perfect manhood of Jesus
Christ, and, in the light of his symmetry and
purity, see it as it really is : and hence the Psalm-
ist says, " Thou hast set our secret sins in the light
of thy countenance." If we would truly know
what kind of men and women we are, we must
set the man Jesus always before our face.

Setting God before our face carries with it a
power of growth. God is not only always before
us : he is always going before us, and beckoning
us to follow. The man who has his back towards
God, like one who has the sun behind him, follows
a shadow. The Bible, from one end to the other,
is full of growth. It is itself a growth. It is a
picture of God leading men ; and, as we read on,
we are impressed with the fact of an advance in
humanity. The plane is higher at the beginning
of Matthew than at the beginning of Exodus ;
and, moreover, the New Testament especially
thrills with the summons to advance and growth :
" Grow in grace." " Forgetting the things which
are behind, and stretching forward to the things
which are before." " Be no more children ; but
grow up into him who is the head." " Press

FACING GOD. 71

toward the mark for tlie prize of your high calling."
Constant contact with true greatness and goodness
lifts even a small man. Enoch, who walked with
God, must have acquired a divine quality in his
manhood. In the very nature of the case, a man
who has God always before his face cannot be
stationary. A mountain is a constant temptation
to climb ; and when one has climbed, and caught a
view of still higher summits beyond, he is restless
until he has climbed them too. The vision of God
ever draws us on with sweet and powerful allure-
ment. The more we learn of him, the more we see
to be learned: the higher we rise in character,
the greater possibilities of character are revealed.
And the keeping of God constantly before the
face engenders hope. Hope, if we are to believe
Paul, is the very atmosphere in which a Christian
lives and breathes. "We are saved in hope."
The creation is indeed "subject to vanity," but
44 in hope " that it shall be 44 delivered from the
bondage of corruption into the liberty of the glory
of the children of God." There are sufferings of
this present time ; but God also is in this present
time, alike as a fact and a promise of glory to
be revealed. Amid the darkness and vagueness
which encircled the Old-Testament future, this
psalm is like a sweet flute-note amid the crash and
discord of a vast orchestra. I know nothing more
winning, more soothing, than these verses, which
put the whole future into God's hands with such
serene trust and sure confidence that all will be
well for ever and ever. I have not been moved,

72 FACING GOD.

and " I shall not be moved ; " because the Lord is
" at my right hand." Because he is at my right
hand, my happiness is secure ; for " at his right
hand are pleasures forevermore. In his presence
is fulness of joy." I shall not wander in the dark
and devious ways which lead to death, for " thou
wilt show me the path of life." Death and the
grave frighten me not : " thou wilt not leave my
soul to the unseen world; thou wilt not suffer
thy beloved one to see the pit. I have no good
beyond thee." Oh, how wonderful that is ! No
good beyond thee. Thou includest all good ; the
remotest future will not carry me beyond thee ;
the march of eternity will not overpass thee ; thou
shalt still be continually before my face, age after
age, as I shall rise and grow and work on ever-
longer lines in the atmosphere of heaven, chan-
ging, developing, but ever " into the same image,
from glory to glory." In this world we are
often troubled about the future. Sometimes the
shadows fall backward, and cloud all our present
with gloom : but it need not be so if only we keep
the Lord continually before our face ; for then we
are going forward to God, and after God; and
whatever the future may have for us, it will have
God, and that is enough. So Jesus evidently
thought when he said to his disciples, " I will re-
ceive you unto myself, that where I am, ye may be
also." It was enough that they should be with him :
they had, and could have, no good beyond him.

To-day, as we approach the Lord's table, we
bring David with us. The words of the Old-Tes-

FACING GOD. 73

tament saint fit into the holy rite, and carry with
them a profound Christian meaning. For God
ever before the face is a truth of God's economy
in all dispensations, — a truth bound up with the
fact of a human relation to God. The Christian
dispensation brings out the truth with new power,
by showing the glory of God in the face of Jesus
Christ. The holy sacrament is a constantly re-
peated admonition to set the Lord — the Lord as
revealed in Jesus, our Redeemer — always before
our face. Its lesson is, " looking unto Jesus ; "
looking, as a means to our successful running of
our Christian race ; and its admonition is pointed
in this, — that it emphasizes the ahcays, the contin-
ual keeping of Christ before us. It is not meant
to drag our faces round six times in the year, and
to fasten them for an hour on Christ, only that we
may turn them away again to the world and its
vanities. It does indeed offer us a reminder of
Christ; but it reminds us that Christ is not merely
an incident of our life, but our life itself. It
sharpens the spiritual perception, and brings out
the lines of the beloved form more definitely ; but
it says to us, " Look now, that you may continue
to look." Keep the form which faith sees, always
before your face. You who come to-day to enjoy
this privilege for the first time, take this thought
into all your life henceforth : for you can have
no weightier thought attaching to this sacrament,
than that it is an admonition to you to keep Christ
before you in each day's life ; as on this day he is
set before you in symbol.

V.
LIGHT AND LOYALTY.

V.

LIGHT AND LOYALTY.

" Jesus answered, Are there not twelve hours in the day ? If
a man walk in the day, he stumbleth not, because he seeth the
light of this world.

" But if a man walk in the night, he stumbleth, because the
light is not in him." — John xi. 9, 10.

THE disciples were dismayed when Jesus pro-
posed to go to Bethany to visit Lazarus. A
Jewish mob was no trifle, and it was only a little
while before that the Jews had sought to stone
Jesus for what they counted blasphemy. They
were orthodox but ferocious, and would not hesi-
tate to murder him.

Hence the disciples remonstrated against his
exposing himself again to these fanatics : " Master,
the Jews were but now seeking to stone thee ; and
goest thou thither again ? " They spoke for them-
selves as well as for him. Thomas evidently ex-
pected that the journey to BetHany would result
in death to him and to them.

Jesus takes this opportunity to explain to his
disciples the great principle on which he himself
worked ; and, to commend this principle to them,
he puts it in a figurative way. If a man walks

77

78 LIGHT AND LOYALTY.

in the daytime by the light of the sun, he walks
intelligently and securely. If he tries to walk in
the dark, he stumbles, and goes astray. I walk
in God's light, which shines on my path during
the time he has fixed for my ministry. Wherever
that light shines, I go, regardless of every thing
but the light. So if you, my disciples, have this
same divine light in you, and follow it, you will
be as men walking in the daylight. Your path of
duty will be clear. Without that light, you will
be as men walking in the dark, — stumbling, and
meeting disaster. You will have no clear or con-
sistent ideas of duty, and your practice will be as
confused as your ideas.

We are thus led up to the question of the sim-
plicity of duty. Somehow duty has come to be, to
many of us, a very complicated matter ; and possi-
bly our conceptions of it have tended to a little
haziness. That duty presents problems, every one
of us knows ; but it is a fair question, whether the
problem always lies in the duty, and does not
sometimes lie in us. It is a fair question, whether
we do not often complicate the problem by adding
factors of our own. It is a fair question, whether
the haziness is not sometimes in our eyes, and not
in the moral outlines which God draws. Christ
asserts the possibility of the light in us being dark-
ness. The oculist will tell you there is a blind
spot in every eye. Possibly, when we think that
God has made duty obscure, we have brought the
duty into line with the blind spot.

As a matter of precept, duty is simpler than

LIGHT AND LOYALTY. 79

perhaps we give it credit for being ; for, if duty is
to be a thing of universal obligation, it must be
simple in the nature of the case. To make it a mat-
ter of subtle casuistry, of painful research and nice
balancing, would be, at best, to limit it to a very
few, and to make moral outcasts of the rest. The
Jew of Christ's day made it just that. He had
gotten into a muddle over the moral law ; but the
muddle was in him, and not in the law. The law
was so simple and clear that Christ threw it into
two great principles; and Christ came not to
destroy it, not to supplant it, but to clear it of the
rabbinical rubbish with which the Jew had over-
laid it. The fresh simplicity of our Lord's teach-
ing was like a strong, wholesome breeze sweeping
away cobwebs, and laying bare the original sim-
plicity and directness of the old code.

But, after all, our thought to-day does not turn
on the simplicity of the moral law itself. Men
stumble none the less because of this simplicity.
Christ, in our text, does not put the blame of the
stumbling on the law or on the complication of
duty. It is not the geological structure of the
stone which makes the man stumble : it is dark-
ness or blindness. As men stumble who walk in
the night, and stumble because they do not walk
in the twelve hours of sunshine ; so, morally, men
stumble because of moral darkness in themselves.
" He stumbleth because there is no light in him"
Our Lord here asserts that a divine light is given
to men to guide them to duty, just as the sun is
given to enlighten the way by which they travel,

80 LIGHT AND LOYALTY.

or the work which they do ; and that that light is
placed by God himself in the man himself, just as
the sunlight is set working through the human eye
to produce vision. Hence he says elsewhere : " The
lamp of thy body is thine eye : when thine eye is
single, thy whole body also is full of light; but
when it is evil, thy body also is full of darkness.
Look therefore whether the light that is in thee
be not darkness. If therefore thy whole body be
full of light, having no part dark, it shall be
wholly full of light, as when the lamp with its
bright shining doth give thee light." When a
man sees two trees where there is only one, or a
crooked line where there is a straight one, or pris-
matic colors in a house that is white, we do not
blame the structure of the tree or the drawing of
the line or the painting of the house. We say,
the man's vision is diseased. A sound moral vision
recognizes duty under every shape, and takes its
measure. Hence the truth of our text is, that the
recognition of duty, and the practical solutions of
its problems, lie in the principle of loyalty to
Christ. A divinely enlightened conscience and an
obedient will, not only push, but lead. They
prompt to duty, but they also define it. "I am
the light of the world : he that followeth me
shall not walk in darkness, but shall have the light
of life." In other words, he shall be enlightened
as to how to live. The light shall shine upon the
path of right living, and the path of the just shall
prove to be as the shining light that shineth more
and more unto the perfect day.

LIGHT AND LOYALTY. 81

Let us look, now, at the illustration of this truth
in the incident of our text. Going to Bethany
involved a question of duty for Christ. God was
to be glorified in his son's victory over death, and
the faith of the disciples was to be strengthened
thereby. The obligation was laid upon Jesus to
go to Bethany then.

And to one who had no thought but to do the
will of his Father, the case was very simple. No
question was possible. There was that plain duty
to be done, and the light shone full and clear upon
the way to Bethany.

But the disciples, in their natural timidity, put
another element into the question, which compli-
cated it : that was, the element of personal safety.
"If you go to Bethany you will be stoned, and
possibly killed." It is easy to see, that, if Jesus
had entertained this suggestion, his mind would
have been diverted from the plain duty before
him. A new question would have been raised,
which God had not raised at all. God's commis-
sion said nothing about danger, stoning, or death.
It was simply to go to Bethany, and to do what
was to be done there. Every thing else was ex-
cluded ; and so long as Jesus was true to the prin-
ciple of simple loyalty in his own breast, so long
as he refused to entertain any thought beyond
that of implicit obedience to God's command as it
stood, his course lay out in the clear light. It
might bring him into peril, but the course itself
was plain. If he meant simply to do right, the
decision presented no difficulty : if he meant to

82 LIGHT AND LOYALTY.

save himself, then the question became full of un-
certainties, and weighing of probabilities. From
the moment of admitting that consideration, he
would have walked in darkness.

What an expounder of duty that element of
singleness is ! How much meaning there was in
our Lord's expression, — " A single eye " ! How
much easier and simpler a man's walk and work
are when he sees an object in its oneness, than
when his diseased eye doubles it ! Is not single-
ness of purpose an element of all the heroism of
which you know ? Was there ever a great general
whose thought was divided between victory and
personal safety? Would the six hundred ever
have passed into history if they had stopped to
weigh the probabilities of mutilation and death?
The familiar poem puts that singleness power-

fully:-

" Theirs not to make reply,
Theirs not to reason why,
Theirs but to do and die."

The men who have moved society have moved
under that principle of self-abandonment, seeing
nothing but the end to be won. No man whose
thought was divided between himself and his
object ever succeeded as a moral reformer, or as a
helper of the wretched. When a physician enters
upon his profession, he does so with the knowledge
that he must ignore contagion. That makes his
duty very simple, — to relieve disease and pain
wherever he finds them. The moment he begins
to consider whether he may not expose his own

LIGHT AND LOYALTY. 83

life to fever or cholera, his usefulness is over.
When Luther stood before the Diet at Worms, he
had a terrible danger to face, but a very easy
question to solve. His most significant words, as
it seems to me, were, " I can do no otherwise : "
the expression of a loyalty which could entertain
no other thought along with a plain issue of duty.
Had he thought of imprisonment, papal ban, papal
favor, or death, Christendom would not be ringing
to-day with the name of Luther. That inability
to do any thing besides the one right thing carried
the Reformation.

And this singleness is the very essence of Chris-
tian service, on Christ's own testimony. Its first
law is, Deny self, — treat self as though it were
not ; follow me. It is not always easy to follow
Christ ; but the way, at least, is plain.1 A greater
difficulty arises the moment that the question be-
comes one of compromising and adjusting between
Christ and self. A man gets no divine help in the
solution of that question, because Christ refuses
altogether to entertain it. The command to take
up the cross is the command to throw down self.
The shoulder of self will not bear the cross. Self
and the cross exclude each other. The only way
in which self can ever be adjusted to the cross is

1 " For the object of religion is conduct ; and conduct is really,
however men may overlay it with philosophical disquisitions, the
simplest thing in the world. That is to say, it is the simplest
thing in the world, as far as understanding is concerned ; as re-
gards doing, it is the hardest thing in the world. Here is the
difficulty, — to do what we very well know ought to be done." —
Matthew Arnold : Literature and Dogma.

84 LIGHT AND LOYALTY.

by being nailed to it. Any other mode of adjust-
ment is as impracticable as the squaring of the
circle. The vital question in all cases of duty is
not the nature of the duty, but the fact of duty,
and your and my attitude toward the duty. To
what does the duty appeal in us ? Does it appeal
to a settled principle that duty is to be done always
and everywhere, because it is duty ? or to a princi-
ple that duty is to be done under certain circum-
stances, when it does not conflict with desire or
self-interest ? If the appeal is to the former prin-
ciple, then, though the duty itself may be hard, it
is not hard to know whether it ought to be done.
It is enough that it is duty. No man can ever
walk in darkness who accepts that principle. The
largest element of difficulty is removed from the
case when self is forbidden to raise the questions
of hard or easy, safe or dangerous. Self always
makes greater difficulties than God does.

Duty is a fixed fact, to be taken as it is. It
does not adjust itself to us ; we must adjust our-
selves to it : and that is a great deal easier, hard
though it be, than to shape the duty according to
our notions. There is a nebulous mass far off in
the depths of space, — a tangled skein of stars,
appearing to the eye like a volume of thin vapor.
The problem before the astronomer may be very
difficult of practical solution, but the nature of the
problem is simple and clearly defined. He is to
resolve that mist into its component stars, and to
find out, if he can, the number and relative posi-
tion of those stars. If he is bent on bringing the

LIGHT AND LOYALTY. 85

facts which his telescope discovers into harmony
with some theory of his own, he complicates his
task at once. The stars will not change their size
or their position because of his theory. If he
would know the facts as they are, he simply takes
what his telescope gives him. Then every thing
depends upon his telescope. Let some careless
or malicious hand crack the lens, or incrust the
mirror with a film, his observation results only in
guess-work : but, with his lens and mirror clean
and rightly adjusted, his eye penetrates the veil of
mist ; and he brings back from the infinite spaces
tidings which enrich the records of science. So,
when men look at duty through loyal and obedient
hearts, its lines come out plainly and sharply.
Let self put a film over the spirit, duty remains
unchanged. God's will must be done, but the man
sees only a mist. That filmed eye raises more and
harder questions than the duty itself. Duty is not
complicated by elements of danger and self-sacri-
fice : the complication comes out of our refusal to
see these elements as parts of duty, out of our fruit-
less attempt to see duty at some point from which
the danger and sacrifice shall disappear, out of our
determination to convince ourselves that any thing
which involves danger and sacrifice cannot be duty.
When the engineer sat down before the mountain
which divides Italy from Switzerland, and decided
that his railroad must go straight through that
mountain, he had a difficult task indeed, but a
simple one. His railroad must go under that
mountain ; and you see, that, in addressing himself

86 LIGHT AND LOYALTY.

wholly to that solution of his problem, he at once
got rid of a thousand questions as to the practica-
bility of other routes, and the possibility of getting
round or over the mountain. His task was infi-
nitely simplified by his fixing upon a definite
course, with all its difficulties. He could concen-
trate all his ingenuity and skill on overcoming the
difficulties.

I take it no one ever had so clear a perception
of the hardness and agony which his mission in-
volved as Christ himself had ; so clear and vivid,
indeed, that his humanity more than once recoiled,
and cried, " Father, save me from this hour. If it
be possible, let this cup pass from me!" And yet
the closest study of Christ's life reveals not a
shadow of hesitation or doubt about following the
line of duty. His step is as firm toward Bethany,
where he knows that the Jews may be waiting to
stone him, as when he is going to the sweet retire-
ment and hospitality of Mary's and Martha's home.
Whether duty points to Zaccheus' feast or to
Calvary, he walks with equal decision. He goes
to the cross saying, " The Scripture must be ful-
filled." He comes back from the dead saying,
" Thus it behooved Christ to suffer." Sometimes
as we look at this firm, constant walk of our Lord,
we are moved to say, " Would that duty were as
plain to me as it seems to have been to him ; would
that I could move forward without hesitation as
he did." And then we go on to reason that this
may not be ; because Christ was so superior to us,
and possessed of divine knowledge. But we are

LIGHT AND LOYALTY. 87

wrong there. Whatever Christ was, he was a man ;
and duty was no different a thing to Christ than
it is to us ; and Christ not only tells us in our text
the secret of his own clear perception and unfalter-
ing pursuit of duty, but gives us the same secret
for our own use : " If a man walk in the day, he
stumbleth not, because he seeth the light of this
world." The case was not that Christ knew the
nature and bearings of duty better than we do
(though that is true), but it was that Christ
walked in the light of simple loyalty to God, under
the simple rule that God's will was to be done ;
refusing to admit into his mind any question but
this : " Is it, or is it not, the will of God ? " The
motto of his life is given by himself at Jacob's
well : " My meat is to do the will of him that sent
me, and to finish his work." Living by that prin-
ciple, he walked in the light. His eye was single,
and his whole body was therefore full of light.
He admitted no question of stoning or crucifying.
He knew that duty involved loneliness and hatred
and homelessness and persecution and crucifixion ;
but it was enough that it was duty. And hence
it is that his life, while it is the most tremendous
tragedy in history, ranging through the whole
gamut of human experience, marked by an infinite
variety of incident, is the most purely simple,
clearly cut life in all its relations to duty of which
we have any knowledge. This singleness of eye,
this principle of absolute loyalty to truth as truth,
and to duty as duty, relieved his life of a thousand
elements of perplexity and hesitation which con-

88 LIGHT AND LOYALTY.

fronted other men. As a straight road carries one
past a multitude of thickets and bogs and stony-
places, even though the road itself may be rough ;
so Christ's path, though it was a rough way, and
led to Gethsemane and Golgotha, carried him past
all questions of policy, — questions of making a
good appearance, questions of the good opinion of
the world, of wealth, of worldly position, — past all
the endless perplexities which wait on the effort to
compromise between God and the world, all those
things, in short, which are the torment of nine-
tenths of the world to-day, and which make duty,
even to so many Christians, a sphynx's riddle.

Now, look at a contrast to this straightforward,
clear course of Jesus at Bethany. Take an Old-
Testament case, — Saul at Michmash. The matter
of duty there was as plain and simple as at Beth-
any. God had said to Saul, "Do not move the
army without sacrificing to God ; do not offer sac-
rifice yourself, but wait till Samuel comes." Saul
had only to wait till Samuel should come, whether
it were seven days, or seventy ; and if he had fixed
his mind on that single point of duty, his course
would have been as plain as the sun in heaven.
There were indeed other considerations, but not
for Mm to discuss. Obedience to that naked com-
mand involved apparent trouble and disaster ; but
God had said nothing about these, only " Wait."
But Saul admitted those other considerations. He
would not walk in the light of that simple duty.
He admitted the possibility, that circumstances
might justify him in disobeying God. And the

LIGHT AND LOYALTY. 89

moment he did that, you see how his course became
complicated. What a multitude of hard questions
crowded upon him. The enemy was concentrat-
ing, the soldiers deserting : a decisive blow must
be struck. He was burdened at once with the
solution of all these difficulties, instead of having
sinipty to wait. True faith and simple loyalty
would have left all these matters in God's hands ;
but Saul had not true faith and simple loyalty.
He assumed the functions of a priest, he sacrificed
to the very God he was disobeying ; and his pre-
sumption cost him his kingdom.

In short, the life of obedience to God, while it
bears the cross, and includes danger and self-sacri-
fice, is simpler and easier than the life of worldly
policy and self-interest. The selfish life always
walks in darkness, though it often prides itself on
its astuteness. The loyal, unselfish principle of
duty carries with it a power of revelation. If duty
is merely a question of circumstances, then every
new set of circumstances raises a new question
and a new difficulty. If duty, on the other hand,
is a matter of absolute obligation under all cir-
cumstances, then the whole mass of such questions
and difficulties is disposed of at a blow. In the
most confused whirl of circumstances, Christ's true
follower knows his way.

And Christ's teaching and example in this mat-
ter are valuable to every age. To none more than
to this, when the selfish and politic principles of
the world seem to be pouring like a flood over the
lines of Christian duty. In an age which tends to

90 LIGHT AND LOYALTY.

moral compromise, this principle which illumined
Christ's way ought to be sharply defined and em-
phasized in the consciousness of every Christian.
If there is a word to be spoken for truth and
righteousness, even though it recoil upon the man
who speaks it in abuse, or in social or political or
religious ostracism, he must none the less speak it ;
looking not at the recoil, but at the truth and the
righteousness. If there is a protest to be made by
example against social looseness and corruption,
the loyal Christian cannot be in doubt about what
his duty is, though he may shrink from the hard-
ness of the duty itself. His way lies straight
before him. It is an easier way than the path of
compromise. Almost daily, practical issues arise
in our lives which bring us face to face with this
teaching of Christ ; issues where the only light we
can get will come from a loyal and obedient heart :
where, the moment we step out of the line of light
which streams straight from God's Word, we are
in darkness and confusion. I repeat it: we sim-
plify life and duty, we clear up and dispose of a
multitude of hard questions, by taking, as our
fixed, immutable principle, duty, always and every-
where. Suppose duty costs reputation, popularity,
ease, social approval : it is none the less duty for
that reason. Christ does not mean to save us
cost. He gives fair warning of that. He does
not promise that the man who walks in the light
shall have an easy walk. He promises that he
shall not stumble : but Christ did not stumble
because he was crucified ; Stephen did not stumble

LIGHT AND LOYALTY. 91

because he was stoned ; Paul did not stumble be-
cause he was imprisoned and beheaded. Each of
the lives over the cross, the stone, the prison,
walked straight to its goal ; and their track lies out
in the light as a lesson and a warning to every one
who would live a true, loyal, faithful life. The
stumbling begins the moment we let in any other
consideration than that of duty. Darkness and
confusion come in with these. The stumbling
would have been in Christ accepting Satan's offer
of the kingdoms of the world, in Stephen keeping
silence ; in Paul making terms with Nero and
with the Jewish leaders, and saying smooth things
to the debauchees at Corinth, and to the philoso-
phers at Athens. If a man adds to his life by
avoiding the danger that lies in the path of duty,
that added life is no gain. It has no divine bless-
ing and no divine guidance. Such life is not
God's gift: it is filched by him who wins it.
Reputation, popularity, security, won by evasion
of duty, are not gains. They shine in a false and
transient light, and they will soon lapse into dark-
ness. The light shines steadily to-day over Beth-
any, — light which gilds the door of every closed
tomb. Better that Christ should have gone in the
face of the stones than that the world should have
missed the lesson of the resurrection and the life.
The light of all the ages centres in the cross.
Better all that agony than that the world should
have missed a Saviour. Better the light and glory
and honor, in which Christ and his apostles and
the good and true of all time stand enshrined to-

92 LIGHT AND LOYALTY.

day, than if they had shirked the cross and the
scourge, the prison, and the sneer of the world.

But remember that this steadfast, light-giving
principle in the soul is not a matter of mere
human resolve. As I have often told you, no
radiant, life-giving life is ever generated by a
mere code of laws, or by mere strength of resolu-
tion. Christ is in the soul as an inspiration, and
not merely before the eye as an example. The
single heart is formed only by the living contact
of God's spirit. The single heart is the pure
heart ; and no amount of resolution, no library of
moral treatises, no portrait-gallery of holy exam-
ples, can of themselves purify the heart. That is
the work of God's transforming spirit alone.

And once more remember, that though Christ,
in setting you on that well-lighted track of duty,
does not allow you to take account of the hardness,
He takes account of it. He has been over every
inch of the ground himself : he has felt the rend-
ing of the thorns, and his feet have been bruised
by the same stones which bruise yours. You can-
not live a life so hard that Christ has not lived a
harder, you cannot make so great a sacrifice that
Christ has not made a greater. He does not push
you out on straight lines of hard duty to walk
alone. He goes before. His word is, "Follow
me ! " And all along that line he walks close to
you, even as he promised, when he said, " Lo, I
am with you alway." Only keep the eye on him,
follow him anywhere and everywhere, and you
cannot go wrong : you cannot get into darkness in

LIGHT AND LOYALTY. 93

questions of duty. He is a strict but a tender
master ; and on the way in which he leads you
are not only crosses and thorns, but light and
love and sympathy and peace, and, at the end,
heaven.

" Deem not that they are blest alone
Whose lives a peaceful tenor keep ;
For God, who pities man, has shown
A blessing for the eyes that weep.

There is a day of sunny rest

For every dark and troubled night ;

Though grief may bide an evening guest,
Yet joy shall come with early light.

Nor let the good man's trust depart,
Though life its common gifts deny, —

Though with a pierced and broken heart,
And spurned of men, he goes to die.

For God has marked each sorrowing day,

And numbered every secret tear ;
And heaven's eternal bliss shall pay

For all his children suffer here."

VI.
THE ORDERED STEPS.

VI.

THE ORDERED STEPS.

"The steps of a good man are ordered by the Lord: and he
delighteth in his way.

" Though he fall, he shall not he utterly cast down: for the
Lord upholdeth him with his hand." — Ps. xxxvii. 23, 24.

THAT first step of your little child, — what an
event it is ! After the child has grown into a
strong and hearty boy, his walking does not inter-
est you in itself, but only in its direction, which
often menaces his safety or that of your household
treasures ; but now the single step is a thing of
profound meaning. One, two, three, — each time
your eye is on the little foot, and your hand ready
to catch the tottering form at the first symptom
of a fall. Never again will single steps have such
interest for you. And yet why not ? In manhood,
no less than in infancy, single steps are significant.
You find it out sometimes in disagreeable ways.
One step in the dark carries you off firm footing
into an open trap, or down a bank. The first step
down a wrong road is the beginning of trouble-
some, and possibly dangerous, wanderings. The
first wrong step, — how many men have looked
down a dismal perspective, and have seen it like

97

98 THE ORDERED STEPS.

a footprint of fire! The first step to honor or
fortune, — how much meaning it has after the
honor or the fortune has been won !

Now, Scripture holds to the emphasis upon the
single steps. The word "walk," as you know, is
constantly used by it to express the course and
method of a man's life: "Enoch walked with
God." "Thou shalt keep the commandments of
the Lord thy God, to walk in his ways." " Walk
while ye have the light." " See that ye walk cir-
cumspectly." These are a few instances out of
scores. Walking is a matter of steps ; and, in God's
training of men, he directs their attention to the
single steps rather than to the course of their lives
as a whole — to the details of the life, in other
words, rather than to the life at large. This is the
first truth of our text: Grod orders, arranges, es-
tablishes, the details of his children's lives.

There is a practical wisdom in this. We speak
contemptuously sometimes about a man of details,
as if he were an inferior sort of man ; but really
very few of mankind have the ability to grasp
large masses of work, and succeed only by doing
work in detail, a piece at a time, each day's duty
in its day. And the man who can give details over
to somebody else, and devote himself to the larger
aspects of his business, is no less dependent upon
details than before. He is at the top of the ladder,
but the top rests on what is below. He had to
climb the steps to the top.

There is also a profound philosophy in this.
The principle has a very wide reach. The boy

THE ORDERED STEPS. 99

who saves penny after penny in order to make up
his dollar, is working on a line which goes out
through all the universe. His little economy is
an outcome of the great truth that God moves
masses through details. When the attraction of
gravitation acts upon that cannon-ball as it flies
through the air, and gradually draws it to the
ground, the attraction is exerted, not upon the
ball as a mass, but upon each separate particle.
When water, in obedience to its law, flows down
a steep, the force which draws it down to its level
acts upon each separate drop. Thus, then, the
particles of the cannon-ball do not fall to the
ground because they are included in the mass.
The particles make the mass, and the mass falls
because of the force exerted upon the separate
particles. The drops make up the current. There
is a current because the attraction draws every
drop to its level.

This law of matter is a law of morals, a law of
providence, a law of divine economy : the greater
is reached and moved through the less, the mass
through the detail. Character is an accretion, an
aggregate. A man is what the details of his life
are, whether in his business life, his intellectual
life, or his moral life. He receives great impulses
in all these spheres, but all these impulses work
out their result through detail. See the illustra-
tion of this in the history of Divine Providence as
we have it in the Bible. One of the most common
of popular delusions is, that God is always and
only busied with great things ; and yet in the

100 THE ORDERED STEPS.

Bible he is constantly dealing with details. He is
explaining a servant's dream ; he is providing for
a little castaway babe in a bulrush basket ; he is
furnishing water to a thirsty crowd of people ; he
is dictating a code which goes into every item of
eating and drinking and cleansing; he is giving
directions about fringes and embroideries, about
blue and scarlet curtains, about the patterns of the
priests' dresses, and the knops and flowers in the
temple architecture.

The case is no different when he becomes mani-
fest in the flesh. Christ's life and work are full
of detail. Now he is coming out to comfort some
poor fishermen in their lonely toil, and to fill their
nets with fish. Now he is caressing little children,
again noting a poor widow's little coin dropped
into the treasury, or talking with a wretched wo-
man by a well, or supplying wine for a wedding, or
bread and fish for a hungry multitude.

The same thing appears in Christ's preaching.
He tells men how to live ; but he says nothing about
great, far-reaching plans of life. His talk is rather
of living by the day, and letting the morrow take
thought for the things of itself. He treats of our
talk, yet not of our studied discourses and elaborate
orations ; rather of our ordinary communication,
our words, our common affirmations and denials :
and by these he tells us we shall be justified or con-
demned. He comes to reveal God to us : but his
speech is not about the God of vast designs and
transcendent power ; rather of one who paints each
lily of the fields, and feeds the birds, and marks the

THE ORDERED STEPS. 101

sparrow's fall, and numbers the hairs of our heads.
He teaches men their duty to society : but he says
nothing of great schemes of beneficence ; rather,
he cautions us against harming the little ones ;
bids us visit the sick and the prisoner, and give
the cup of cold water to the wayfarer ; to speak a
kind word for an angry one, and to meet the blow
with forgiveness. And, when he promises reward,
he sums up the achievements of the best and
greatest in these words, — " Thou hast been faith-
ful over a few things."

Thus you see one law — the law of the steps —
running through physical and moral nature alike.
Gravitation and Providence observe the same prin-
ciple. God regulates the mass through the particles ;
society, through the individual ; the individual,
through the details of his life. Men, with their
joys and sorrows and infirmities, are not carried
down and swallowed up as single drops in a cur-
rent. Each individual soul in the great sweeping
tide of souls, each element in the experience of
each soul, is the subject of his divine forces. The
drops determine the tide, the steps determine the
life ; and the life which is led by him is led step by
step, and each separate step has its meaning and
its relation to every other step. We do not see
this. As life unrolls day by day, the duties appear
to have so little relation to each other that we
receive no impression of design or plan. There
seems to be that absence of design even in the
Saviour's own words : " The morrow shall be
anxious for itself." But that is only in appear-

102 THE ORDERED STEPS.

ance. The steps of a good man are established ;
not ordered each day as emergencies arise, but
pre-arranged. The plan, the pre-arrangement, does
not appear when you see that laborer laying a
single course of brick or stone ; but the architect
sees that course as part of his design. We must
study history, and especially Bible history, to real-
ize that life evolves itself according to a plan.
Look, for instance, at the familiar story of Joseph.
The plan is plain enough to us now. We see a
meaning and a mutual relation in all the separate
events of that history, but Jacob did not see it.
He said, " All these things are against me ; " while
we know, and he afterwards found out, that they
were all for him. To Joseph the pit did not mean
the place next the throne. The same is true of all
history. God moves on such long lines that it
takes a good many centuries, with their countless
steps of countless men, to work out a design of
his ; yet that plan bears the footmark of every one
of those millions, and its lines are only the lines of
those myriad lives.

The steps of a good man, then, are ordered. He
does not walk at random. His life is not a series
of accidents which some superior power gathers
up after a while, as a potter might gather the loose
fragments of clay, and mould them into what he
could. And really you and I, in our measure, are
familiar with the same fact, and act it out. You
see in a son of yours promise of intellectual and
moral power ; and you set yourself to shape that
boy's career, and you do shape it, and that by

THE ORDERED STEPS. 103

attending to its successive steps. You watch and
care for every detail of his training, and the boy's
life bears the mark of your ordering. Is there
any thing strange in our heavenly Father's ordering
the steps of his children ? Is not the true reason-
ing from the less to the greater ? " Sow much
more shall your heavenly Father give good things
to them that ask him."

We talk a great deal of our free choices, our
independence, our self-determination ; but, if we
insist on these, we do not come within the Psalm-
ist's description. It is the steps of a good man that
are established. I do not say that God has nothing
to do with the steps of others ; he has very much
to do with them : but we are not concerned with
that now. The good man of the Psalmist's
thought is the man of law, — the man who rec-
ognizes the excellence and the rightful claim of
the divine law, and who gives himself up to it.
The Bible alternative is very sharp and plain.
Either we are to be ordered by God, or we are to
be self-ordered. If we undertake to order our own
steps, we must take the consequences, and relin-
quish all claim upon God's ordering. I am not
preaching to you inflexible fate, but obedience to
divine wisdom; not the passive submission of a
corpse to a rushing current, but the loving and
intelligent obedience of a free will. There are
those who seem to think that obedience is incon-
sistent with freedom, and that a man shows his
freedom by revolt against law. They forget that
a free will may choose to obey another will. If

104 THE ORDERED STEPS.

God has prepared tracks for my life ; surely my
very freedom of choice empowers me to keep to
those tracks : and, to the obedient, loving soul,
it is an immense comfort and relief to know
that his life moves on prepared lines. I sat one
evening in a window looking out on Charing-
Cross railway-station, with its trains arriving and
departing every few minutes, and its cross-tides of
thronging people. A train stood on the track,
and the bell rang for starting. In front, through the
great archways, I looked out into the misty night.
A few stray gleams of light revealed a labyrinth
of rails, curving and crossing : above was a signal-
stand — a great hieroglyph of green, red, and
white lights, shifting every moment ; and into this
darkness and confusion the engine moved. What
was it that made that engineer so quiet and confi-
dent ? Why was he not disturbed and anxious at
the chaos of rails and lights and the thick night
beyond ? Simply because every thing was laid
down for him. He had only to obey the signals,
and drive his engine : the track was laid. Other
minds had the care and responsibility of the
switches and signal-lights : he had only to go for-
ward, and to stop when bidden.

" I do not like the picture," some one will per-
haps say. " It leaves me little to say about my
life." Well, change the picture if you will. Let
the engineer go forth from the station on an en-
gine not fitted to a track. Let him move out into
the night, in the consciousness of independence and
free choice, to avoid collision and wreck as he can.

THE ORDERED STEPS. 105

Have you bettered the matter any ? Are you any
better, any more dignified, any more secure, strik-
ing out into this selfish world on your own respon-
sibility, and with only your own wisdom ? Have
ever so much to say about the ordering of your
own life, the simple question is, whither your
ordering will take you. The area of human life
is marked all over with these tracks of individual
choice, but unfortunately they are lined with
wrecks. There are no wrecks along the lines on
which God orders the steps: "He that walketh
uprightly walketh surely." " Acknowledge him
in all thy ways, and he shall direct thy steps."

The second truth of the text is, that God is
pleased with him ivho thus lets his steps be ordered.
Literally the words read, "From Jehovah is
it that a man's steps are established, so that
he hath pleasure in his way." This need not
detain us long. It is self-evident that God is
pleased to have men walk in the ways which he
himself ordains ; and his pleasure is not simply in
the fact that he is obeyed, not merely in receiving
from men the tribute of respect and submission
which is his due. We do God a great wrong
when we picture him as a creditor whose interest
in his debtors begins and ends with their paying
their debts. God merges the relation of debtor
and creditor in that of father and child. It is a
very small part of your interest in your child, that
he should repay you for your care of him. In
fact, payment is impossible. On the contrary,
every thing the child does or says is interesting to

106 THE ORDERED STEPS.

you because he is your child. Other children say
bright and quaint things, but none of them have
quite the flavor of those which come from his
baby lips. And when he begins to walk, you are
not criticising his walk by the rules of the dan-
cing-master ; .you are simply delighted in his way,
rejoiced to see him growing strong and exercising
his limbs : and so it is all the way up to manhood.
What he does and says and achieves and suffers
has the keenest interest for you, because he is your
child. Now, possibly, we find it hard to transfer
just that feeling to God ; and yet that is the true
view of his feeling towards his children. A group
of statesmen engaged in the discussion of a treaty
would probably give no thought to the group of
children playing under the windows of the coun-
cil-chamber, but God does not look upon men in
that way. From one point of view we might
justly think, that all the " windy ways of men "
— all their rushing up and down, all their hot
pursuit and all the objects they pursue, all their
striving and wrangling — are to God just what
two newsboys playing marbles are to that banker
as he walks down the street to negotiate a loan of
millions. And yet " God so loved the world that
he gave his only begotten Son." It was to just this
crowd of men and women, with their little ambi-
tions and their petty strivings, that he looked for
those whom he should call and justify and glorify,
conforming them to the image of his Son. And
therefore God is interested in whatever concerns
these children. Every step of that life-problem

THE ORDERED STEPS. 107

which you and I are working out is noted by him.
No one has so deep an interest in our working it
out well. Each undertaking, each acquisition,
each trial, each conflict, each victory, — he con-
cerns himself with it; and your fatherly heart
never beat with more joy at your babe's first step,
or your boy's first prize in school, than does his at
each step of ours in the way he has laid down :
every victory over self and sin, every honest pur-
pose formed in reliance on him, every forward
step in self-mastery, reflects glory on him. He
leadeth his children in the paths of righteousness,
not for their glory, but for his name's sake. He
delighteth in their way.

" Ah ! " you say, " I would fain believe myself a
child of God. I desire to please him, but my way
is not perfect. It is sometimes little better than a
series of stumbles and falls : and, instead of being
a radiant, strong, white-robed son of God, my gar-
ments are soiled with the world's dust, and I am
all bruised and scarred ; and it seems a cruel satire
to tell me that the Lord delighteth in my way."

Here, then, the third truth of the text comes
in. Evidently the Psalmist recognizes infirmity
as an element of the good maris walk. There is a
possibility, more than a possibility, of his falling,
which the text provides for: "Though he fall,
he shall not be utterly cast down: for the Lord
upholdeth him with his hand." We may go back
again to the illustration of the babe's first walk.
There is none which better suits the case. We
who call ourselves strong men, who seem to walk

108 THE ORDERED STEPS.

so firmly and securely, what is our walk, after all,
but the tottering walk of little children? And
yet you do not despise that baby's attempts at
walking, because he falls over now and then. The
falls somehow are taken up in the fact of his walk-
ing : they are a part of it. You do not want him to
be hurt ; you are sorry for him when he falls ; you
try to keep him from falling; you take him up
tenderly, and dry his tears after each fall : and yet,
clumsy, tearful performance though it is, you de-
light in his way. You would rather have him fall
a hundred times, — yes, and hurt himself too, —
than not have him walk at all. Let us face the
fact squarely. There is falling along the path by
which God orders a man's steps. It is not that
God ordains sin. He does not. But the path
which God ordains for a good man lies through
this world : and sin is in the world, no matter why
or how ; and a good man's walk with God consists
very largely in a fight with sin. What God
pledges is not that the man shall escape all con-
tact with sin in his walk, not that he shall not
feel the power and bitterness of sin, not that he
shall walk to heaven a perfect, sinless man all the
way. The Psalmist prays, "Order my steps in
thy word : and let not any iniquity have dominion
over me ; " and, when we turn from the Psalmist
to Paul, we find the answer to that prayer : " Sin
shall not have dominion over you, for ye are not
under the law, but under grace." The promise,
therefore, does not cover the fight with sin, but
the victory of sin. Even the man whose steps are

THE ORDERED STEPS. 109

ordered of the Lord shall know, and know well,
the anguish of that fight; but, though Apollyon
bring him to the ground, he shall stretch forth his
hand, and grasp his sword, crying, " Rejoice not
against me, O mine enemy : for when I fall, I shall
arise ; " and, as he goes on his way scarred but
victorious, he shall be a living, walking testimony
to the truth: "The steps of a good man are es-
tablished by the Lord." Establishment does not
exclude conflict or fall. It comes about through
the successive conflicts and falls and risings again.
You and I never have seen a perfect man, we
never shall see one : we know enough of men to
know that those whom we love best, and think
best, and trust most, have their infirmities and
their errors ; and yet we are not unfamiliar with
men who are nobler than their faults. We know
of something in those men which lies back of all
their faults, which seems beclouded now and then
by the dust from their fall, but which, after each
fall, rises up again through a mist of penitent
tears, and asserts itself as the dominant power in
their lives. There is something in the deathless
persistence of that power, something in its daunt-
less renewal of the struggle with sin and self,
which makes us reverence that man more than
one whose life seems an even-spun thread of recti-
tude without knot or tangle. One has said of
David after his moral fall, "He is not what he
was before, but he is far nobler and greater than
many a just man who never fell and never re-
pented." Let us beware of thinking repentance

110 THE ORDERED STEPS.

a sentiment of a lower grade, or degrading to the
man who drops its bitter tears. There is some-
thing heroic in the man who looks up to God's
ideal of manhood far, far above him, and at him-
self, lamed and wonnded by his fall, and says,
"By God's grace I will monnt to it." There is
something transparently honest and noble abont
the man who looks his own shame and infirmity
in the face, and says to God, " All that thon say-
est of its vileness is true to the last word. Thou
art justified when thou speakest, and art clear
when thou judgest." " Unbelievers," says Carlyle,
"sneer, and ask, 'Is this your man according to
God's heart ? ' The sneer, I must needs say, seems
to me but a shallow one. What are faults, what
are the outward details of a life, if the inner secret
of it — the remorse, temptations, the often-baffled,
never-ending struggle of it — be forgotten, —
struggle often baffled, sore baffled, driven as into
entire wreck, yet a struggle never ended, ever
with tears, repentance, true unconquerable pur-
pose begun anew."

So the steps of a good man are established, —
established in spite of his fall. Walking in the
way of God's order brings with it that strong, im-
mortal, unconquerable principle which re-asserts
itself after every fall, and keeps the man's face
set toward God, and his feet pressing on along
the heavenward road. It is a divine principle,
the very hand of God stretched forth each time
in fulfilment of the promise : " Though he fall,
he shall not be utterly cast down : for the Lord
upholdeth him with his hand."

THE ORDERED STEPS. Ill

From these truths we draw some conclusions of
great practical value : —

If God has ordained a way for men to walk in,
it is the height of folly to walk in any other way.
If a man's steps are established in that way, they
must be feeble and uncertain, and ending in a dis-
astrous fall in any other way. If God walks that
way with his children, establishing their steps, and
upholding them when they fall, those who walk on
other roads, walk without his help and strength,
and therefore walk in danger. Fancied indepen-
dence, which chooses its own road and walks in its
own wisdom, is a poor compensation for the surety
and safety and help vouchsafed to him who com-
mits his way unto God.

If God, as we have seen, orders our ways, step
by step, it becomes us to take heed to the details
of our lives. If our acts and choices were de-
tached, if the significance of each one began and
ended with itself, a single step might be less im-
portant. But every step is an element of progress
in one direction or the other. Every act, every
choice, is a piece which fits into some other piece.
Every deed is a link in a chain. You shall go, and
stand beside yonder woman at her embroidery,
and see her putting in the stitches carelessly, and
now and then inserting a stitch of the wrong
color; and, on your calling her attention to the
fact, she shall say, "No matter, the whole piece
will be very beautiful when it is done." You
know it will not, for what is the entire pattern
but a mass of single stitches? The great outcome

112 THE ORDERED STEPS.

of our lives will be shaped by their details. Our
lives are not what great crises make them. They
are made by those little words and deeds, those
daily touches, those successive steps.

If God orders each detail of our lives, ought we
not to get great and solid comfort out of the fact ?
More and more, as it seems to me, his divine dis-
cipline turns our eyes from the vague future with
its uncertain results, and fixes them on to-day's
duty and to-day's privilege. We are distressing
ourselves, it may be, about the outcome. There
is no need, if we follow God's rule, which confines
us to the separate steps. When a traveller in the
Alps is ascending an ice-slope where he has to cut
steps as he mounts, he thinks of little besides the
step he is at that moment cutting. He has a point
to reach, a space to traverse ; but all that is lost
sight of in the danger and difficulty which wait on
every step. He knows he will escape destruction
only as each step shall be rightly cut, and his foot
firmly planted each time. It is a good deal so in
this life. It is not a safe journey by any means ;
but there is this assurance for a child of God who
walks it, that each step shall be sure if he only
commits his way unto the Lord. And while there
is not much comfort to the man who is cutting his
way up the ice, there is a great deal for the man
who will accept this principle as his rule in life,
and concern himself with his single steps rather
than with his life in a mass. You say that makes
your life fragmentary. Very likely. I wonder if
some of us have not to accept fragmentariness,

THE ORDERED STEPS. 113

and make the best of it? You have been balked
in many of your plans ; and your life, perhaps, has
been a mere -doing of what came to hand ; and you
have possibly said, "Life is an utter failure. It
would not have been so if I could only have
carried out my plan." Perhaps not. Perhaps it
would have been a greater failure if you had car-
ried out your plan. Only, here is Christ, pointing
down at a little dead sparrow, and saying, " Not
one of them falleth to the ground without your
heavenly Father's notice." God looks after frag-
ments, and works through them to make glorious
units of his own.

The separate steps ! Sometimes each one seems
to sink into a quagmire, or to strike a stone. It
is hard to walk on in strong faith that they are
ordered by the Lord. The little cares and vexa-
tions ! They seem to be interruptions to the course
of the life. No call for patience or self-control in
these. And yet suppose these are the very things
which go to make up the course of the life. Sup-
pose you wake up by and by to find that you
have cast away the blessing which lay hidden in
an annoyance. So, then, to conclude, it becomes
us to fall in with God's order, and to attach to the
separate steps the same importance that he does. If
we do, we shall never think slightingly of any act or
word. We shall acquire a new sense of the value
of each single soul, and shall cease to view men in
masses. We shall be led to develop the resources
of single points of effort. We shall find more joy
and success in our daily lives, and in our worries

114 THE ORDERED STEPS.

and disappointments, and amid the temptations to
feel that we are carried helpless and uncared for
in the mighty sweep of time and change, we shall
tnrn back to the old psalm, and say, " My steps are
ordered of the Lord ; he delighteth in my way ;
he npholdeth me with his hand ; and if he be for
me, who can be against me ? "

VII.

FIDELITY AND DOMINION.

VII.

FIDELITY AND DOMINION.

"His Lord said unto him, "Well done, good and faithful ser-
vant: thou hast been faithful over a few things, I will set thee
over many things : enter thou into the joy of thy Lord." — Matt.
xxv. 21.

THERE are three great elements of work in
the kingdom of God, — quantity, quality, and
ability.1 Quality is a matter of character ; ability,
of endowment ; quantity, of improvement. When
we sit down before an artist's picture, we con-
sider his skill as a draughtsman and colorist, and
the power of his mind to evolve ideas. These
represent his ability. We consider the character
of his picture, the lesson it teaches, — whether it
awakens pure and high thoughts, or base and sen-
sual ones ; whether it is true to the great laws of
art. These represent quality. And then we sum
up the result, and ask how much of a picture the
artist with his degree of ability has made. What
rank will it take ? Is it a great picture, or a poor
picture ? The answer to that is quantity.

How do these three stand related to each other

1 I am indebted in this introduction to Professor Alexander B.
Bruce's admirable work on The Parabolic Teaching of Christ.

117

118 FIDELITY AND DOMINION.

in Christian work and reward ? For what is reward
given in the kingdom of God, — for ability, quanti-
ty, or quality ? Here we may profitably study this
familiar parable of the talents, in connection with
the parable of the pounds in the nineteenth of
Luke. These two are not the same. Each treats
the truth from a different point of view. In the
parable of the pounds, we are taught that equal
ability implies equal quantity, and that, when abil-
ity is equal, quantity determines merit, and, there-
fore, that unequal quantity is unequally rewarded.
The master gave his ten servants a pound apiece.
The endowment was equal, the outcome was
unequal. One returned ten pounds for his one;
another, only five for his one. The first received
authority over ten cities, and was, besides, addressed
as a good and faithful servant. The other received
only five cities, and not a word was said about his
goodness or fidelity.

Turning now to our parable of the talents, we
find that the endowment, the ability, of the several
servants, was not equal. It is represented by the
difference between five, two, and one. As in the
parable of the pounds, we have a varied quantity
in the returns, represented by five, two, and zero.
But in the award we notice that the difference
between five and two is wiped out or ignored;
and that the same reward is given to the servant
who brought two for two, as to him who brought
five for five. Here, then, it appears that quantity
does not enter into the question of award. The
same award is given for different quantities; so

FIDELITY AND DOMINION. 119

that we need a third factor in order to determine
the principle of this judgment. That third factor
is quality, and quality is fixed by the proportion
of quantity to ability; in other words, by the
answer to the question, Did the servant do all he
could with his endowment ? Were two talents all
the interest of which his capital admitted with the
most faithful and diligent use? The award in
this parable, then, is based, not on the differences
between the returns, but upon the fact common to
both returns, that ability had been worked at its
highest power, and had yielded the most and best
of which it was capable ; that both alike bore the
stamp of faithfulness. To both servants it is said,
" Thou hast been faithful ; " to both, therefore,
" Enter thou into the joy of thy Lord." Faithful-
ness imparts the quality which answers God's test
of moral value ; and value and award in the king-
dom of God turn upon quality, and not upon
quantity. Faithfulness spans the differences of
ability. No difference of endowment can put one
out of reach of that test. It follows endowment
down to its vanishing-point, and binds the possessor
of an infinitesimal fraction of a talent to raise his
fraction to the highest power as stringently as
it binds the holder of five or ten talents. The
servant with the smallest capital was condemned
simply because he did not use it. On the other
hand, endowment never rises out of the atmos-
phere of faithfulness. No measure of ability ever
exempts from duty. No amount of brilliancy
compensates for unfaithfulness.

120 FIDELITY AND DOMINION.

Let us now look at a few of the details of the
parable which illustrate this principle. Observe,
first, that all human endowment and its largest re-
sults are small, measured by the standards of God's
kingdom. To the holder of the five talents, as to
the holder of the two, it is said, " Thou hast been
faithful over a few things.'" Human endowment
and human performance, the few things, get their
significance from their relation to the many things,
— the great, thronging facts and principles and
laws of the kingdom of God. The most persistent
and varied activity and the largest achievement of
the greatest man are but small, in themselves con-
sidered ; but they are points where the vast econ-
omy of the kingdom of God — that something which
is vaguely indicated by " many things," " the joy
of the Lord," — emerges into the region of our
human life, and touches it. That which is out of
sight is more and greater than that which pushes
out into our view. That point of rock which rises
out of the hillside is, to the geologist, not merely a
distinct stone. It tells him the dip and quality of
the great strata under ground which buttress the
hills. Obedience, responsibility, duty, work, love,
trust, — all that makes up Christian life here, —
are sides and manifestations of the unseen, spirit-
ual universe. Godliness has promise, not only of
the life that now is, but of that which is to come,
— has the promise which one part of a thing gives
of the other part. Godliness is a part of the life
to come. Godliness is God revealing himself in
human character. Follow back godliness, and you

FIDELITY AND DOMINION. 121

come to God. The boy who is learning his alpha-
bet is handling the same elements which enter
into the plays of Shakspeare or the dialogues of
Plato. He has begun upon literature when he has
learned ABC. It is a little thing in itself for
him to learn twenty-six letters, but it is a very
great thing when you consider the alphabet as the
medium of the world's thought. Even so, I re-
peat, the largest endowment and the largest result
are shown by this utterance of Christ to be but as
" a few things," but acquiring, nevertheless, a tre-
mendous and eternal importance as integral parts
of the great moral economy of God. The man
who is administering a moral trust, discharging
duties, improving gifts, is within the circumfer-
ence of that kingdom which spans eternity and
the universe ; and it is that fact which gives mean-
ing and value to his few things.

This appears further as we consider a second
feature of the parable. Work and accomplishment,
in themselves, are trivial, because they do not involve
mastery. Look at our Lord's words : " Good ser-
vant, thou hast been faithful over a few things, I
will set thee over many things." The word is habit-
ually used of putting in a position of authority or
mastery. Good and faithful people are constantly
tempted to identify success with accomplishment,
and to think that they fail because they cannot
do what they set out to do. But you observe that
God gives no promise of mastery for this world.
God is not nearly so much concerned that you and
I should accomplish what we purpose as that the

122 FIDELITY AND DOMINION.

quality of our work should be heavenly. Hence
it is that he sets upon true and good work, not
the seal of accomplishment, which is a thing of to-
day, but the great moral seal of the eternal heav-
enly kingdom, which is faithfulness. This, and not
accomplishment, is what determines its real value.
It is a fact of observation, that good men do not
always, nor perhaps often, carry out their plans.
Often their plans are larger than their lives ; often
their plans are weaker than their circumstances :
and these facts tend to irritate and depress them.
They do not see that these temporary failures may
lie on the direct line of a delayed success. The
greatest success in life is to maintain fidelity, — to
be faithful, though the outcome be only a few
things. The man who has a great reform to carry
through, a great truth to lodge in the convictions
of society, has not necessarily failed if he die
with society unreformed and unconvinced. He
has failed if he has given up trying, if he has lost
faith in the truth, if he has let down his ideal.
That is disastrous failure. One thing which we
are slow in learning is, that the best human work
is fractional. The divine whole is greater than
any one man, or than any one man's work. We
of this age are carrying out something which our
fathers left incomplete, and we in our time shall
leave something for our children to carry out.
" Other men labored," says our Lord, " and ye
have entered into their labors." Abraham filled
his place grandly ; he was the father of the faith-
ful: but the divine economy of faith was not

FIDELITY AND DOMINION. 123

completed in Abraham. Paul was needed to
supplement Abraham, and the saints of the nine-
teenth century to supplement Paul ; and the men
of faith of the twentieth century will supplement
those of the nineteenth, and add something to the
outcome of their life and work. The men of the
past, so the writer to the Hebrews tells us, "had
witness borne to them through their faith ; " but
he says also that " they received not the promise."
Faith did not issue in full fruition. God " prom-
ised a better thing for us, that they should not be
made perfect apart from us." In other words, we
are necessary to their perfection. Their work,
their moral ideals are carried on and developed by
us, and so the development goes on from century
to century. Therefore, human work, Christian
work, does not issue in mastery here. Even the
few things may be too much for the servant. The
mastery comes only by way of reward.

And yet the parable very clearly shows us that
faithfulness is on the direct line of mastery : " Thou
hast been faithful, therefore I will make thee
ruler." Fidelity tends and leads up to mastery.
Success is a thing of stages and aggregations ;
and it is of vastly more consequence that the
man should be rightly pointed, set in the direc-
tion of a larger, divine success, than that he should
achieve what he undertakes here. If there is no lar-
ger, purer, more spiritual kingdom than this, there
is no such thing as real success. If there is such
a kingdom, and if the earthly sphere of Christian
life and work is a part of it, then the success may

124 FIDELITY AND DOMINION.

well lie beyond the line of our human vision, and
be too large for our little inch-rules. The great
principle holds, — fidelity leads up to mastery.
You see it illustrated daily. You see the faith-
ful journeyman advanced to the foremanship, the
plodding student become an authority : you see
men of moderate ability becoming powers in busi-
ness or in manufacturing, by steady devotion to
one thing. The thing itself may be small ; their
perseverance magnifies it: and they themselves
grow into the ability to handle larger things
through their fidelity to the smaller interest.

We notice again, that fidelity to the few things
carries with it the promise of fidelity to the many :
"I will set thee over many things." In that
promise, you observe, not power, but confidence,
is emphasized. The idea of a trust is carried up
from the lower to the higher plane. Delegated
authority is a trust no less than delegated duty.
All through the New Testament, Christ insists
that endowment means, first of all, responsibility.
Rule is trust. The man who cannot be trusted
is the man who must not rule.

Now, the popular idea is, that moral responsi-
bility is concerned mostly with great things. But
keep in mind the truth we have been illustrating,
and which lies at the root of this parable, — that all
human action gets its quality and meaning from
its relation to the kingdom of God. From this
point of view no act is insignificant, no neglect
safe, no violation of trust trivial. Christ strikes
at the root of the popular error. Fidelity has

FIDELITY AND DOMINION. 125

nothing whatever to do with the magnitude of the
trust. That truth is written in black lines on the
moral history of humanity. The story of Eden,
whatever else it may teach, asserts God's insistence
on fidelity to a small trust. The conditions im-
posed on our first parents were not complicated
nor burdensome : they were but to let one tree
alone. That simple condition they did not meet.
Put in trust with the tree of knowledge, they
betra}^ed their trust: and is it too much to say
that the loyalty which could not bear so small a
strain was a feeble sentiment ? that this little act
of eating a fruit showed the man's unfitness for a
dominion founded in loyalty to God quite as deci-
sively as a greater and noisier act would have done ?
Let us beware of flattering ourselves that we will
be loyal to God in great issues, even though we may
not be in smaller ones. The moral quality which
determines the smaller issue will determine the
greater one. Our Lord leaves us in no doubt on
this point : " He that is faithful in a very little is
faithful also in much : and he that is unrighteous
in a very little is unrighteous also in much ; " and
that is the principle which you frankly accept in
your dealings with men. Unfaithfulness in the
smallest work, in the lowest sphere, is no recom-
mendation for promotion. You do not choose for
foreman of your establishment the man who has
been doing slovenly work in a lower place. If
your clerk has stolen a dime, you will not make
him your cashier. It is not a question of quantity,
but of quality. You do not consider how much he

126 FIDELITY AND DOMINION.

stole, but that he stole. It is quite enough for you
to know that he will steal, and the dime brings
out the fact quite as well as a thousand dollars.
In the kingdom of God, nothing is small, nothing
is insignificant. The few things take their char-
acter from the many things; the talents are of
a piece with the joy of the Lord ; the pounds
and the cities are under one economy. If the
joy and the cities are great and significant things,
they make the single talents great and signifi-
cant.

We cannot insist too much on the truth that no
act or thought of ours stands by itself. We say,
" This is a little transgression, or a little omission ; "
but we forget how the thing may be magnified by
its connections. The handle of the throttle-valve
on that locomotive is a small piece of iron, much
smaller than the pistons or the driving-wheels;
and that reckless lad climbing upon the engine
might say, " This piece of iron is so small that it
will not matter if I pull it ; " but, at the first touch,
the steam hisses, and the wheels begin to revolve,
and he is carried helplessly down the track. Our
contact in this world is not with whole things.
We touch extremities, or sides of them ; and how
far back the things themselves run, how many
branchings and connections they have, we do not
and can not know. The neglect or the fault which
we call little may be as the end of a slow match
connecting with a magazine. No matter how
little, how few, the things we have to deal with,
fidelity is the only insurance.

FIDELITY AND DOMINION. 127

Hence, the Bible emphasizes small trusts. The
tragedy of this parable, and a terrible one it is,
centres in the servant who had but one talent.
The smaller your trust, the less your ability, the
greater is the call for care and watchfulness, be-
cause a peculiar temptation attaches to small
endowment.1 There is not even a plausible excuse
for neglecting a great trust ; but it is one of the
commonest of things for people to neglect their
gifts, and let them run to waste because they are
small. You notice, that, in the parable, the man
with the one talent is the only one of the three
who is represented as under temptation to neglect.
If your boy has a present of ten dollars, he is easily
persuaded to put it by as the nucleus of a hundred.
It is not hard for him to see that it is a good piece
of a hundred. But if he has a quarter of a dollar,
he will say, " I may as well spend that." He does
not see that the quarter is part of the hundred as
well as the ten. The quarter has just as real and
definite a relation to the hundred as the ten. Even
so, the commonplace man, the man who thinks he
does not count, the small talent, the scant power
to speak or act or plan, — have just as real and
just as definite a relation to the great economy of
the kingdom of God as the most brilliant array
of gifts. That fact of itself settles the question of
duty. That fact of itself enjoins faithfulness. That
fact of itself justifies God in rebuking and punish-
ing the servant who hides his single talent in a

1 See Drummond's Natural Law in the Spiritual World.

128 FIDELITY AND DOMINION.

napkin. It has been well said, that, " It is just the
men whose capital seems small who need to choose
the best investment. It is those who belong to
the rank and file of life who need this warning
most."

Once more, observe that the parable fixes our
attention less upon the work than upon the worker ;
or, perhaps we might better say, upon the work
through the worker. As we have said, the lesson
turns on the question of quality; and the qual-
ity, faithfulness, is imparted by the servant. The
satisfaction of the master lies, not in the fact
that his five talents have grown into ten, but
in that the increase is due to his servant's faith-
fulness. In God's eyes, the best and highest
result of work is a good worker. I think, that,
in our ordinary interpretations of this parable,
we are in some danger of overlooking this, and
of laying the emphasis on the development of
power rather than on the development of char-
acter. We say, "The servant made the best of
his power, and the result was correspondingly
large." We draw the practical lesson, " The more
faithfully you use your talents, the more you will
accomplish." We perhaps tend to forget that it
is the moral quality of the user that gives char-
acter to the result ; that a smaller result, as the
outcome of faithfulness, is more in God's eyes
than a larger one without it ; that to God there
is no large result, no good result, without faithful-
ness ; that God demands interest on character no
less than on endowment, and that interest on

FIDELITY AND DOMINION. 129

endowment counts for nothing without interest on
character ; that quality fixes the rate of interest
on quantity. We may go into the other world
with the reputation of great or brilliant or efficient
men. It will count for nothing if we are not also
good men. But it is also true that the servant's
faithfulness sets its own mark upon his work, and
gives all results a new and higher character. An
engineer puts some pounds of dynamite into a
mountain, and blasts open a tunnel. It is a great
result, but it is a mere material result. We all
know what dynamite can do, and we think only of
a powerful material agent overcoming a given
resistance. But, when a Washington has con-
quered freedom for his country, it is more than a
matter of cannon and musketry. It is a matter
of moral ideas, of holy passion and patriotism
and self-devotion and fidelity to a few things,
and courage and loyalty — all set their mark upon
armies and battles and munitions and glorify
them. These fearful material forces, with their
ghastly results, are lifted into the moral sphere.
In the library of a well-known gentleman of wealth
and culture and large social influence, might be
seen, enclosed in a glass case, a common brick. It
told the story of his first step in life. He was a
journeyman bricklayer, and that was the first
brick he ever laid ; and, from the eminence of his
fame and fortune, he had gone back to the old
house where he began his career of faithful indus-
try, and had brought back its first result. Only
an ordinary brick, like millions of others : but you

130 FIDELITY AND DOMINION.

do not need to be told what it was that made it
more than a common mass of clay, that made it a
symbol of faithfulness ; that took that common-
place thing, and brought it into harmony with all
that environment of culture and refinement and
religion, and made it seem not out of place in the
company of books and pictures and statues, and
that linked it with an honorable manhood spent in
the service of God and humanity. Faithfulness
brings out strange relationships between things
apparently most remote, between the material and
the spiritual, between the few things and the joy
of the Lord. Faithfulness alone glorifies power.

Thus, this parable turns on moral quality rather
than on ability. Its keynote is not five talents,
nor two talents, nor one talent, but faithfulness to
all three. It is faithfulness, and not amount, which
links the talent to the joy of the Lord, the few
things to the many. The amount of ability is not
the first thing for you and me to consider : it is
the faithful use of whatever ability we have. To
use aright, we must be right. Vigorous use of
talent is not necessarily right use, for unfaithful-
ness is vigorous also. Whatever legitimate joy
shall ever come to a servant from his talents, will
come through the Master's word : " Well done, good
and faithful servant." Beware of despising any
talent, however small. It comes to you out of
heaven. It is God's trust to you. It is linked
with the great economy of the kingdom of God by
lines which your eye cannot follow. You cannot
prophesy a small result from its neglect on the

FIDELITY AND DOMINION. 131

ground that it is a small talent. God turns you
persistently away from the question of quantity
or amount, and fastens your eyes on one para-
mount fact — faithfulness. You have but a few
things, but one talent ; none the less he says, " Be
faithful." You will do well to study the fate of
him who neglected his single talent.

I am reminded of more than one illustration of
faithful service and inherited joy as I call up the
faces which have vanished from these familiar
scenes of worship, and especially this morning, as
my eye rests on yonder beautiful memorial of a
beautiful and faithful life,1 the gift of bereaved
love to this church, which shared so largely in the
rich ministries of that life. The life itself, it is
true, needs no visible reminder to perpetuate its
power and memory. It has left its abiding record
and its abiding influence in your hearts and on
your church-work. It glows there with richer hues
than those through which God's sunlight streams
to-day ; but none the less the memorial will serve
through many coming years to point the lesson of
to-day, as the sunlight shall bring out the name of
a good and faithful servant, who, through simple
faithfulness, brought full interest out of large en-
dowment, and, having laid it all at the foot of the
cross, entered into the joy of her Lord.

1 A memorial window placed on the north side of the Church
of the Covenant to the memory of Mrs. Nancy McKeen Lewis
by her husband, Dr. Charlton T. Lewis.

VIII.

EXTRA SERVICE.

VIII.
EXTRA SERVICE.

" But who is there of you having a servant ploughing or keep-
ing sheep, that will say unto him, when he is come in from the
field, Come straightway and sit down to meat ; and will not
rather say unto him, Make ready wherewith I may sup, and
gird thyself, and serve me, till I have eaten and drunken ; and
afterward thou shalt eat and drink ? Doth he thank the ser-
vant because he did the things that were commanded ? Even
so ye also, when ye shall have done all the things that are com-
manded you, say, We are unprofitable servants ; we have done
that which it was our duty to do." — Luke xvii. 7-10.

ARE these indeed the words of Him who said,
"Henceforth I call you not servants, but
friends " ? This is a picture of a hard, unlovely
side of life, — a slave's life and a slave's service,
without thanks or claim for thanks. A slave has
been ploughing or keeping sheep all day. He has
done his full day's work, and is tired and hungry ;
but, when he comes back to the house, he finds that
his work is not done yet. He cannot sit down, and
refresh himself : he must wait upon the master at
his meal first. After that he may sit down. Doe^
the master give him any thanks for his service at the
table — his extra service above his day's ploughing
or shepherding? Not so, indeed, says our Lord.
The slave is his own; he has a right to his ser-

135

136 EXTRA SERVICE.

vice anywhere and everywhere, in hours or out of
hours. Even so, he continues, when ye, servants
of God, have done all that is commanded you,
say, " We are unprofitable servants ; we have only
done our duty; we have no title to thanks or
reward, no matter how hard we work."

We ask, I repeat, and not unnaturally, where
such a representation of Christian service fits into
that sweet and attractive ideal which Christ else-
where gives us under the figure of the family rela-
tion, — sons of God, confidential friends of Christ.
Does this picture of slavish service, hard duty, and
no thanks belong to these ?

We hasten to say, No ; but it will require a little
study to discover why we may say no, and to fix
the place of this parable in relation to others of a
happier tone.

In the first place, you observe that it is not un-
usual for our Lord to draw a disagreeable picture
in order to set forth his own love and grace. What
a type of hard, selfish cruelty is that unjust judge,
for example : "I will hear the widow, in order to
be rid of her. I will do what she asks me because
she troubles me, and for fear that she may weary
me to death." Is this like God ? No. If the un-
just judge can be moved by earnest and persistent
appeal, shall not the just God be moved by the cry
of his own chosen ones ? Or, to take another case,
is God like the churlish man who refuses to give
his neighbor bread because the door is shut, and
he is in bed ? Nay, if the churlish neighbor will
yield to importunity, and rise, and give his friend

EXTRA SERVICE. 137

as many loaves as he needs, will not God honor the
importunate faith which besieges his doors, even
though, to test it, he delays for a while ? His delay
is only the prelude to his rising, and giving like a
God.

We must not be repelled by a figure, therefore.
But, then, there are the words, " even so ye also,"
which compel us to recognize in this parable some
features of our relation to God. The parable does
not say that God deals with his servants as a mas-
ter does with a slave, yet it may nevertheless ex-
press some facts and conditions of Christian service.
Let us try to see what these are.

The parable answers to the fact in being a pic-
ture of hard work, and of what we call extra work.
The servant is all day at the plough or in the pas-
ture, and after a full day's work has the extra duty
of serving at table, without regard to his own
hunger or weariness. The service of God's king-
dom is laborious service, — service crowded with
work and burdens. Christ nowhere represents it
as easy. When Christ says his yoke is easy, he
does not mean that there is no pressure from it,
and that it is borne without labor. The word
" easy " is, rather, " good," " wholesome," " profit-
able." Daily experience shows us that the high-
est Christian service involves the most labor, and
it also reveals that feature of Christian service to
which this parable calls our attention, — the ele-
ment of extra service, service not limited by times
and measures. Its calls come at all times. The
master appears at midnight, at morning, or at

138 EXTRA SERVICE.

cockcrow. The servant is to be always ready,
with his loins girded. No Christian can shut him-
self up to a little routine of duty, and say, I will
do so much, within such times, and no more.
When a flower stands out in the open field, with
its great rich petals outspread to the sun, it is not
visited only by certain bees which come at stated
hours to suck its sweetness. These come, indeed,
and fly away loaded with sweets ; but the dragon-
fly wheels round it with his gauzy wings, the
humming-bird thrusts his beak into its crimson
cup, the spider fastens his web on the stalk, and
swarms of busy flies light upon the petals. Its
perfume and its honey are common property. So,
when a Christian stands in the field of Christian
service, his heart open to God's call, his life dis-
tilling the perfume of holy love, he cannot keep
his services upon one line or within certain times.
Demands for ministry swarm over the lines he may
have drawn ; outstretched hands are thrust forth
from unsuspected corners ; voices arise from places
given over to silence ; his hands are always full.
If he begins with a scheme of duties and times, the
feeble hands of sickness and want will throw his
scheme into confusion, or keep him constantly en-
larging it. Take the life of Paul, and see if you
can compress it within any lines of routine, or
measure out its labors, so much per day, or its rest,
so many hours out of the twenty-four. Or look
at the life of our Lord, how it abounds in this ele-
ment of work out of season ! It was the hour of
rest when he sat at Jacob's well, and we are ex-

EXTRA SERVICE. 139

pressly told that he was weary; yet with what
ardor he threw himself into the interview with the
Samaritan woman. So, when from sheer exhaus-
tion he had fallen asleep in the fishers' boat, he
must rise at the call of the frightened disciples,
and quiet the sea and their terror. If he went
across the lake to seek for rest, the multitude took
shipping, and followed him. When evening fell,
he must feed the five thousand to whom he had
been speaking. Wherever he walks, some man or
woman with a sick child beseeches his aid, some
blind man or cripple cries, " Have mercy on me ! "
if he sits at meat, some outcast comes, and appeals
to his pity.

And this is not peculiar to Christian service. It
is a law of all work of a higher type, that it over-
steps mere methodical limits. It is only work of
a mechanical kind that is confined to specific times
and prescribed duties. The nearer you get to
machine work, the more this characteristic asserts
itself. The machine turns round just so many
times in a minute ; a cog raises a lever just so often :
there are no surprises about a steam-engine or a
mowing-machine ; we know exactly what they can
do in a given time : and, the lower the type of
work, the more of the machine character it takes
on — so many hours for so much ; just such a re-
sult for so many pounds of steam. You often hear
it said of this or that man, " he is a mere machine :
he simply obeys specific orders at given times."
The man who makes the fires and sweeps the office
of that statesman comes at a certain hour in the

140 EXTRA SERVICE.

morning, does his round of duties, and goes away ;
comes again at a given hour, feeds the fires, and
goes away again. Nothing more is asked or expect-
ed of him. There is nothing in him or in his work
which carries it over these lines; but the states-
man cannot work in that way. To-day a consulta-
tion breaks into his routine, a state paper keeps
him at his desk until far into the night ; to-morrow
a cabinet-meeting or a debate takes out a great
piece of his time. I have heard a man in this city
remark, that, if his regular routine work — which
most people would think quite enough — were all
he had to do, he should feel quite like a man of
leisure. The outside irregular work had assumed
such proportions as almost to dwarf the regular
duties. So long as a man's work is merely the
carrying out of another's orders, it will tend to be
mechanical and methodical: but the moment the
man becomes identified in spirit with his work ; the
moment the work becomes the evolution of an idea,
the expression of a definite and cherished purpose ;
the moment it becomes the instrument of individ-
ual will, sympathy, affection ; above all, the moment
it takes on the character of a passion or an enthusi-
asm,— that moment it overleaps mechanical tram-
mels. The lawyer is not counting the number of
hours which duty compels him to work. He would
make each day forty-eight hours long if he could.
He has a case to gain, and that is all he thinks
of. The physician who should refuse to answer a
summons from his bed at the dead of night, or to
visit a patient after a certain hour of the day,

EXTRA SERVICE. 141

would soon have abundance of leisure. Pain will
not measure its intervals by the clock, fever will
not suspend its burning heats to give the weary
watcher rest: the affliction of the fatherless and
widow knocks at the doors of pure and undefiled
religion at untimely hours. Times and seasons, in
short, must be swallowed up in the purpose of
saving life and relieving misery.

I need not carry the illustrations farther. You
see that the lower a type of service, the more
mechanical and methodical it is; and that the
higher types of service develop a certain exuber-
ance, and refuse to be limited by times and sea-
sons.

A second point at which the fact answers to the
parable, is the matter of wages ; that is to say, the
slave and the servant of Christ have neither of
them any right to thanks or compensation. What
God may do for his servants out of his own free
grace and love, what privileges he may grant his
friends, is another question ; but, on the hard busi-
ness basis of value received, the servant of God
has no case. What he does in God's service it is
his duty to do. The Romish doctrine of works of
supererogation — special services or sacrifices mer-
iting special compensation — has no warrant in
Scripture. The man's largest services, those which
take most from his legitimate leisure and rest, go
into the general reckoning as duty. In reading
the parable, put the emphasis on the word servants.
We are unprofitable servants. As servants we can
render no service that is not due. In the eleventh

142 EXTRA SERVICE.

of Romans we read, " who hath first given to him
(God), and it shall be recompensed unto him
again ? " " God," as Bengel remarks, " can do with-
out our usefulness." God has no necessary men.
" Doth he thank the servant because he did the
things that were commanded? I trow not. Even
so ye also, when ye shall have done all the things
that are commanded you, say, We are unprofitable
servants ; we have done that which it was our duty
to do."

Now, then, we reach the pith of the parable. It
is spoken from the slave's point of view, it deals
with service of the lower, mechanical type ; and
you find the key to it in the master's command to
the slave to do an additional service at his table,
after he has already completed a full day's work.
Our Lord treats the subject from this lower point
of view, that he may warn us away from that type
of service, and direct us to a nobler one, in which
that which appears to the slave as extra service
ceases to be regarded as such, and is taken cheer-
fully into the larger and more generous conception
of duty as part and parcel of it. It is only the
servile, mechanical worker, in other words, to
whom extra service has any existence. In Christ's
real friends, the desire for service outruns the abil-
ity. Just as the lawyer and doctor regard their
unexpected calls and the infringements on their
hours of refreshment or rest as features of
their work, never thinking of them as imposi-
tions or extra burdens; so the Christian's high-
est conception of service includes all the calls

EXTRA SERVICE. 143

to the ministry which lies outside any scheme of
labor and rest. This exuberance of work, this
constant "finding of the hand" interjected into
the daily routine, this working "double tides,"
this bearing another's and yet another's burden
beside his own, — all fall under the accepted law
of his life. To a man who accepts this view of
Christian service, the parable is not addressed. It
has no application to him. He is working on a
different and a higher basis. The point of impulse
is shifted from a mere schedule of duties to his
own sympathy with Christ's purposes. Behind
service is the trust of a masterful enthusiasm, and
not the stricture of a time-table. Overflow is its
law. Service on the lower plane of our parable is
like that waterfall in the Catskills, shut in by a
floodgate, and made to play to order. It is a thing
of regulated quantities and intervals. Service on
the higher plane is like Niagara, with the pressure
of deep, exhaustless Erie crowding it onward with-
out rest. It cuts tracks for itself, it spreads out
round the green islands, it boils through the nar-
row canals, it leaps and races in rapids towards
the final plunge, and its mist and thunder arise
forever. You might as well attempt to concen-
trate Niagara upon a single millwheel as to keep
the Christ-like impulse to service within the lines
of mechanical routine, and of stated times and
seasons. That service is as exuberant and varied
as it is constant. No jealous floodgates shut down
between it and opportunity. Christ's friend does
not fence off from the claims of service a section

144 EXTRA SERVICE.

of rights to rest and leisure. He would as soon
think of forbidding his neighbor to enter his own
house or orchard. He is not his own ; his heritage
is not his ; his life is a practical assent to the truth
which Paul so forcibly puts to the Corinthians :
" Ye are God's tilled land : ye are God's building."
And therefore God's claims have the free and full
range of his time and of his powers.

I would that there were more of this rich, spon-
taneous overflow in the Christian life of to-day.
We may not look for the luxuriance of the South-
American forest under our colder skies. Our trees
and shrubs are cleaner in outline and less lavish in
foliage and flower ; but our piety need not be sub-
ject to any such physical law. The sun of right-
eousness does not shine obliquely on any part of
God's heritage, and we might well have more trop-
ical exuberance in our religious life. I know that
enthusiasm, is not necessarily boisterous or demon-
strative. The deepest enthusiasm, like deep water,
is often the stillest. But when a man is full of
true enthusiasm, it will out, though he seldom open
his lips. I remember that they used to have in
houses what they called an air-tight stove. It was
shut up on all sides. You could not see a spark
of fire, but you felt it. It was all through the
atmosphere of the room. If you touched it, you
found there was fire in it; and once in a while
it would get red-hot, and show fire. If there is
fire, God 's fire, in a man's soul, it may not sparkle
nor roar, but it will make society feel it some-
how. I am thankful for all the methodical, well-

EXTRA SERVICE. 145

systematized work of religious societies and of the
church ; it is doing good. But I wish we could
have these methodical lines set on fire. I wish
there were more glow in our church-life. As I
go about among people, I do not find them any
too ready to speak of Christ and of his work. I
go into house after house, and I hear all sorts of
subjects talked about, but little of the church of
Christ, its interests, and its work. Mere order is
cold, rigid, and lifeless. You know how, one night
in each year, the dome and front of St. Peter's
at Rome are illuminated. All over the great
curves of the dome, and along the columns and
mouldings and balconies, the lines of lamps are
drawn ; but what a ghastly sight is this skeleton
of lamps until, at the signal, every line of the
mighty structure, from cross to foundation, leaps
into living light ! So it will be with our mechani-
cal duties, our well-organized societies, our forms
of worship, yea, our creeds and catechisms, unless
the Spirit of Pentecost shall touch and set them
ablaze. Oh, that there might come, as in Ezekiel's
vision, the heavenly messenger, with hand filled
with the coals of fire from between the cherubim,
kindling all our hearts, and setting every line of
our church-order aglow with heavenly love ! Some-
times this rigid order, tins systematic and punc-
tilious distribution of duty, goes with a worldly
half-heartedness, which metes out so much to
Christ and his work, and says he shall have this,
— so much time, so much money, — but he must not
trench on my hours of rest and leisure. He must

146 EXTRA SERVICE.

keep liis hands from what I set aside for my indul-
gences and pleasures. When I have ploughed so
many hours in the field, it is my right to sit down
to meat, and be served. I must not be asked to
gird myself, and serve him.

And the moment a man puts himself on that
lower ground, and begins to measure out his times
and degrees of service, and to reckon what is due
to himself, that moment he runs sharply against
this parable. That moment Christ meets his as-
sertion of his rights with this unlovely picture.
The parable says to him, in effect, "If you put
the matter on the business basis, on the ground of
your rights and merits, I meet you on that ground,
and challenge you to make good your claim. I
made you : I redeemed you, body and soul, with
my own blood. Every thing you have or are, you
owe to my free grace. What are your rights?
What are your claims on me? What is your
ground for refusing any claim I may see fit to
make upon you ? What claim have you for
thanks for any service you may render me at any
time?" And the man cannot complain of this
answer. It is indeed the master's answer to a
slave ; but then, the man has put himself on the
slave's ground. The other kind of servant, as I
have said, has gotten out of the way of this para-
ble. He raises no question of rights, claims, or
wages. His thought is only of his master's rights.
His kind of service involves more labor, and is met
by gifts, not wages. That is the service of the
widow who dropped her two mites into the treas-

EXTRA SERVICE. 147

ury. The world would have justified her in hold-
ing back her last penny. Christ himself would
not have been hard with her: but love gave its
last and its best ; and not the mites, but the love,
has made her immortal. It is the service of her
who poured the ointment on Christ's head. Even
to the disciples, the gift seemed like waste. Less
would have sufficed ; but love's impulse could not
rest until the flask was broken, and the whole pre-
cious contents bestowed on that adorable head :
and hence it is, that, whenever this gospel is
preached, the story of that woman's love is told.

And, on this higher basis of service, Christ's
disciple meets with another class of sayings, quite
different from this parable, — sayings which put
him in a nearer and nobler relation to Christ, and
which lift his work entirely out of the region of
moral serfdom. Christ says to such, " Henceforth
I call you not servants ; for the servant knoweth
not what his Lord doeth : but I have called you
friends ; for all things which I have received of my
Father I have delivered unto you." To the servile
spirit, Christ asserts his masterdom. He has no
word of thanks for the grumbling slave who
grudges the service at his table after the day's
ploughing ; but to the loving disciple, — the friend
to whom his service is joy and reward enough, and
who puts self and all its belongings at his disposal,
— it is strange, wondrous strange, but true, never-
theless, that Christ somehow slips into the servant's
place. Strange, I repeat ; but here is Christ's own
word for it : " Let your loins be girded about, and

148 EXTRA SERVICE.

your lights burning." Here is a picture of night-
work, you see. "And ye yourselves like unto
men that wait for their lord, when he will return
from the wedding; that when he cometh and
knocketh, they may open unto him immediately."
Here are the servants, weary, no doubt, with the
day's work, but waiting and watching far into the
hours of rest for their master, and flying with
cheerful readiness to the door at his first knock.
What then ? " Blessed are those servants, whom
the master when he cometh shall find watching :
verily I say unto you, that he shall gird himself,
and make them to sit down to meat, and will come
forth and serve them" The amount of the matter
is, that for him who gives himself without reserve
to Christ's service, Christ puts himself at his ser-
vice. When he accepts Christ's right over him
with his whole heart, not as a sentence to servi-
tude, but as his dearest privilege, counting it above
all price to be bought and owned by such a mas-
ter, he finds himself a possessor as well as a posses-
sion : " All things are yours, and ye are Christ's."
The things which master the slave are mastered
by the friend. Fidelity is mastery. " Thou hast
been faithful over a few things, I will make thee
ruler over many things." Life, with its vicissitudes,
instead of a burden to crush the man, or a current
to carry him helplessly down, becomes his seat of
power; all its chances and changes marshalled
upon God's lines, and made to minister to spiritual
power and peace and to future glory. " Death is
yours." How wonderful ! The king of terrors,

EXTRA SERVICE. 149

who resistlessly siezes and carries away whom he
will, is no more master but servant, standing hum-
bled and chained as porter at the gate through
which you pass to the court of the King Eternal.
"Things present," — Christ's touch makes you
master of them. They are yours, You are mas-
ter of each day's trials and burdens. You mount
on them a step nearer heaven, instead of being
driven by them as with a whip of scorpions.
"Things to come," — they trouble the servile
heart. His outlook is dark. They cannot trouble
him to whom Christ says, " I go to prepare a place
for you, and I will come again, and receive you
unto myself; that where I am, there ye may be
also."

The two lines of service are before us. Which
shall we choose ? Wretched is he whom the Lord
calls unprofitable servant. Happy he who calls
himself so.

IX.

THE PRIDE OF CARE.

IX.

THE PRIDE OF CARE.

" Humble yourselves therefore under the mighty hand of God,
that he may exalt you in due time ;

"Casting all your anxiety upon him, because he careth for
you." — 1 Peter v. 6, 7.

A MAN, digging among ruins, strikes a tile of
an exquisite pattern. Its design seems com-
plete in itself. He admires the graceful lines and
the charming color, carries away his prize, and
shows it with delight to his friends ; but, when he
goes back to the mine, behold ! the workmen have
laid bare a broad surface paved with similar tiles,
and he finds that his specimen is only a fragment
of a larger pattern. If he thought it beautiful by
itself, how much more beautiful it is as a part of
the larger design.

So it is with Scripture. Single texts it fur-
nishes in multitudes, full of beauty, power, and
comfort. But Scripture hangs together. It is a
unit, and every text gains by being studied in its
connections. The last verse of this passage, for
example, is almost always quoted by itself : " Cast-
ing all your anxiety upon him, because he careth
for you;" and, standing thus alone, it is full of

153

154 THE PRIDE OF CARE.

blessed meaning and consolation ; and yet, by
separating it from the preceding verse, we lose a
whole side of its teaching, and a very important
side.

Nevertheless, it is not, perhaps, evident at once
where these two verses fit into each other, — hum-
ble yourselves, and cast your anxiety on God.
How does care demand humility?

The two parts of the text, taken together, state
this truth : that anxiety carries with it a division
of faith between God and self, — a lack of faith
in God, proportioned to the amount of care which
we refuse to cast on him ; an excess of self-confi-
dence, proportioned to the amount which we insist
on bearing ourselves. If we refuse to let God
carry for us what he desires and offers to carry,
pride is at the bottom of the refusal. Therefore,
the apostle says, " Humble yourselves under God's
mighty hand. Confess the weakness of your hand.
Do not try to carry the anxiety with your weak
hand. Cast it all on him. Believe that he cares
for you, and be humbly willing that he should
care for you."

The revised version has brought out a very
important distinction by the substitution of " anx-
iety "for "care." Anxiety, according to its deri-
vation, is that which distracts and racks the mind,
and answers better to the original word, which sig-
nifies a dividing thing, something which distracts
the heart, and separates it from God. The word
"careth" on the other hand, used of God ("he
careth for you "), is a different word in the origi-

THE PRIDE OF CARE. 155

nal, and means supervising and fostering care, lov-
ing interest, such care as a father has for a child.
I want to show how the spirit which refuses to give
up its dividing anxiety to God is allied to pride,
and unbecoming a child in the household of a
divine Father who cares for him.

Our Lord's Sermon on the Mount lays great
stress on this. Over against the natural tendency
to fear and disquietude, it sets the loving care of
an almighty Father. He feeds and shelters the
birds ; he adorns the flowers ; he is more ready to
bless his children than earthly parents are to give
good gifts to theirs. Meat, drink, raiment, — the
man says he cannot live without them. " True,"
says Christ, " God knows that quite as well as you
do. Your heavenly Father knoweth that ye have
need of all these things. The surest way to have
them is to trust in him. These things are included
in his kingdom. Seek that, and all these things
shall be added."

Yet men will say, and very plausibly, " The anx-
ious man has some excuse." Take, for instance,
a man in a position where many are depending on
him for guidance or instruction, and where great
interests are bound up with his success. It will
be said, " It would be strange if he were not anx-
ious." From the world's ordinary point of view,
I should say so too. At any rate, he too often is
anxious, careworn, living in a feverish scramble to
overtake his work, haunted by the arrears of work.
You honor his conscientiousness. So do I. You
say it is unjust to find fault with him. I reply,

156 THE PRIDE OF CARE.

God finds fault with him, even while he honors
his diligence and fidelity, — finds fault with him
because he will not cast off his anxiety on God,
who has offered to relieve him of it. Is that unjust
on the part of our Father ? If so, you are guilty
of similar injustice. Your little son is taken sick,
and is unable to prepare his lesson for to-morrow's
school. He is worried and disappointed; he is
anxious to excel ; he is high up in his class, and
wants to keep his place. You say to him, " Dis-
miss all care about that. I will make it right with
the teacher." And you have a right to expect
that the boy will be satisfied with that ; that he
will take you at your word, and trouble himself
no more about the lesson. And if, in the course
of an hour, you find him worrying about it, are
you not annoyed, and displeased with him ? Do
you not say to him, "You ought to have more
confidence in me " ?

Pride, I say, — subtle, unconscious pride,— is at
the bottom of much of this restlessness and worry.
The man has come to think himself too important,
to feel that the burden is on his shoulders only ;
and that, if he stands from under, there must be a
crash. And, just to the degree in which that feel-
ing has mastered him, his thought and faith have
become divided from God. Let us give him his
due. It is not for his own ease or reputation that
he has been caring. It is for his work. And yet
he has measurably forgotten, that, if his work be
of God, God is as much interested in his success
as he himself can be ; and that God will carry on

THE PRIDE OF CARE. 157

his own work, no matter how many workmen he
buries. He divides the burden, and shows whom
he trusts most by taking the larger part himself,
when God bids him cast it all on him. God, in-
deed, exempts nobody from work. We may cast
our anxiety, but not our work, on him. A sense of
responsibility is a brace to manhood, and a devel-
oper of power ; and, because God wants work and
responsibility to re-act healthfully on men, he wants
them to work with a hearty, joyous spirit. When
the joy and the enthusiasm have gone out of work,
something is wrong. There is a pithy proverb
that "not work, but worry, kills men." God is
providing for man's doing his work most efficiently
when he offers him the means of doing it joyfully
by casting all anxiety on him.

There are few men in responsible positions who
have not felt the force of a distinguished English-
man's words : " I divide my work into three parts.
One part I do, one part goes undone, and the
third part does itself." That third part which
does itself is a very expressive hint as to the need-
lessness of our fretting about at least one-third of
our work, besides giving a little puncture to our
self-conceit by showing, that, to one-third of our
work, we are not quite as necessary as we had
thought ourselves. And as to the third, which
the God-fearing man cannot do, and which there-
fore goes, or seems to go, undone, there is a further
hint that possibly that third is better undone, or
is better done in some other way and by some
other man. That does not flatter our pride. I am

158 THE PRIDE OF CARE.

very sure that it is always true for every faithful
Christian worker, that whatever he cannot do,
after having done his best, it is better that he
should not do. And just there is where the
humility comes in, — in the frank and cheerful
acceptance of the fact, in casting all care about
it on the Lord, and in not worrying and growing
irritated over it. Says a modern preacher, "I
love to work, but I have carried all my life long
a sense that the work was so vast that no man, I
did not care who he was, could do more than a
very little ; that he who could raise up children
from the stones to Abraham, could raise up men
when he had a mind to, and men of the right kind,
and put them in the right place ; that, after all,
the Lord was greater than the work, and that it
was of no use for me to fret myself, and set myself
up to be wiser than Providence. All I was called
upon to do was to work up to the measure of my
wisdom and strength, and to be willing to go
wherever God sent me ; and that then I was to
be content."

A good deal of our energy is expended in plan-
ning; and, when our plan is once made, we set
our life on that track, and it runs with an ever-
increasing momentum. We do not relish a col-
lision or a delay. Insensibly we fall into the way
of assuming that success in life means simply the
success of our plan. Do we bethink ourselves,
that, if our plan is best in God's eyes, he is as much
interested in carrying it out as we are ? If it is
not best in his eyes, surely we do not want it car-

THE PRIDE OF CARE. 159

ried out. Either way we may safely and restfully
leave it with God. If we are determined to carry
it out anyway, and are irritated at obstacles and
delays, is that any thing but pride ? Are we so
sure our plan is right, so proud of our pet project,
that we must torment ourselves if God does not
pet and foster it as we do ? Oh, how afraid we
are that our poor earthen vessels will go to pieces !
Possibly we have forgotten how God once defeated
his people's enemies by means of the breaking of
vessels. What fools those three hundred of Gideon
would have been if their attention had been ab-
sorbed in keeping their pitchers unbroken; and
especially if, at the command to break the pitchers,
they had said, " What a shame to spoil so much
good earthenware ! " They would have saved
their pitchers, but would have lost their victory.
A pitcher for a victory, a plan for a success, fine
strategy on paper for conquest, — a poor exchange,
surely.

It is right for us to make plans ; but we ought to
draw them as we draw the first draught of a plan
for a new house, in lines that can be easily rubbed
out if God so please. Pride gets into these plans
before we know it. We think we want God's
work to succeed, and so we do ; only, we want it
to succeed in our way, and on the line of our plan.
And yet not seldom God brings about the very
result we are working for, by breaking our plan
all to pieces. Then comes the test of our humility.
Are we content to cast the whole matter on God,
and to look cheerfully on the fragments of our

160 THE PRIDE OF CARE.

plan ? Are we humble enough not to feel grieved
or angry because God chooses somebody or some-
thing else to do the same work ? Sometimes God
lets us see how much better the work is done by
the breaking of our plan. The forty years among
the mountain solitudes seemed to Moses, perhaps,
lost time ; but that slow, tedious ripening gave
Israel a leader and a law-giver. The next forty
years yielded rich interest on the sad monotony
of the previous forty. It seemed to Jacob that
every thing was against him when Joseph was
stolen away. He could not see that Joseph had
been sent to prepare a home for his old age, and
to lay the foundations of a nation which should bear
his name. It seemed as though the church could
not spare Paul when he was shut up in prison,
but the church of to-day has the four epistles of
the imprisonment from that chained hand.

A young lady had consecrated herself to the
work of missions, and was about to go to India.
Just at that point, an accident disabled her mother,
and the journey had to be deferred. For three
years she ministered at that bedside, until the
mother died, leaving as her last request that she
should go and visit her sick sister in the far West.
She went, intending to sail for India immediately
on her return ; but she found the sister dying with
comsumption, and without proper attendance : and
once more she waited until the end came. Again
her face was turned eastward, when the sister's
husband died, and five little orphans had no soul
on earth to care for them but herself. " No more

THE PRIDE OF CARE. 161

projects for going to the heathen," she wrote.
" This lonely household is my mission." Fifteen
years she devoted to her young charge ; and, in her
forty-fifth year, God showed her why be had held
her back from India, as she laid her hand in bless-
ing on the heads of three of them ere they sailed
as missionaries to the same land to which, twenty
years before, she had proposed to go. Her broken
plan had been replaced by a larger and a better
one. One could not go, but three went in her
stead : a good interest for twenty years.

But there is a class of cases where anxiety
is clearly prompted by self-interest, vanity, and
worldly ambition. Self cannot cast such anxiety
on God, because God will not take it. When God
bids us humble ourselves, he surely will not minis-
ter to our pride. He will not stretch out a finger
to lighten the burdens of sensitive vanity, or to
save pride from a fall. If you are aiming, for
instance, merely to make a show in society, with-
out regard to solid worth or usefulness ; if you are
harassed with care in keeping up your sham, and
with fear lest some one may see through it, — you
dare not cast that care on God. You know very
well, that, if you put such a thing as that into his
hand, he will break it to pieces. So you will have
to carry that burden all alone, if you insist on
carrying it. You know that if you cast your care
on God, you will have to humble yourself ; and to
be humbled is the very thing you are most afraid
of. If you are making such mad haste to be rich
that all the sweetness. has gone out of your life, if

162 THE PRIDE OF CARE.

you are in hot pursuit of the superfluities of this
world, and are leaving behind you in the chase
Christian charity and Christian duty and Christian
worship, do you think God is going to lighten your
burdens so that you can go faster after your end ?
Nay, I challenge you to cast that care on God.
You will not do it. You know that God has no
sympathy with it. If you will convert yourself
into a coining-press, you need not expect God to
help it run smoothly when your faith and your
domestic affection, and all your best possibilities,
are run into dollars. It is hard enough work, as
you know, — harder and drier than God would have
chosen for you ; but you must do it alone. Care
which will not humble itself under his hand, he
will not touch. It is not an easy thing that the
text urges. If it were merely to throw off trouble
of all kinds on God, that might not be so hard.
But God does not hold out his arms to our bar-
dens unconditionally : he is willing to take the
burden on his hand, if we ourselves will come and
stay under his hand, not otherwise. He refuses
to take the care without the self. If we will put
the self into his hand absolutely, he will take it,
care and all. But many an one would like to
cast the care on God, and keep the self in his own
hand. The text does not mean merely the laying
down of ivearied heads on a fatherly arm, but the
voluntary stooping of proud heads. Casting all
our care on God is casting self on God, for self is
our worst care. It is not merely coming to God
with our failures, and asking him to make them

THE PRIDE OF CARE. 163

good, but it is confessing also that our unaided
self is the worst failure of all, and saying frankly
to our heavenly Father, " Without thee I can do
nothing."

God has different ways of teaching this lesson.
You know how a schoolmaster will sometimes shut
himself up with a dull pupil, and hold him down
to a problem. So God sometimes shuts a man up
with himself and his own helplessness. Even
then he does not force the man's will; but he
means that he shall for once look squarely at the
impotence of self, that he shall for once face and
confess to himself the fact that self has exhausted
its resources, that the world cannot help him,
that he has nothing in heaven or earth but God.
That, as men see it, is a terrible blow to pride. The
bitterest draught that ever a man is called on to
drink is the confession that he cannot help himself.
The world says, a man is at his worst then. I am
not sure of that. The Bible would say that he is
just within reach of his best. I heard a little story
the other day, which was very suggestive. An old
Scotch woman was on a steamer in the Northern
Atlantic, and was in a continual worry lest there
should be a storm. The wind and the sea began
to rise ; and she besieged the captain with questions
about the probabilities of disaster, until, becoming
a little impatient, he solemnly said, " Well, madam,
I think we shall have to trust in the Lord."
" Oh ! " cried she, " has it come to that? " It is the
simple, spontaneous utterance of human unbelief,
when it is thrown on God alone. Has it come to

164 THE PRIDE OF CARE.

that? Then, indeed, we are in evil case. Paul
did not think so, however. He was in that situa-
tion during most of his life ; and he really seemed
to think that the situation was not only not hope-
less, but commanding : " If God be for us, who
can be against us ? " There was Elijah. God
drove him into the wilderness, where, for any
thing he could do, he must perish. But he did
not perish. God made the ravens his purveyors,
and caused the brook to flow for his refreshment.
Then the brook dried up. He had no water, but
he had God; and, at the critical moment, came
God's word : " Go to Zarephath ; I have commis-
sioned a widow to feed thee." She was at the
gate when the prophet came, but the prospect was
not encouraging. She was gathering sticks to
bake her last handful of meal, and there was a
son to take the small share which the prophet
might have had; and what mother's heart could
hesitate between her child and a stranger ? Eli-
jah might have trusted the evidence of his senses,
and have despaired, instead of casting all care for
the matter on God ; but he can even ask the fam-
ishing mother to bring him the first share of the
wretched repast, knowing that the barrel and
the cruse were in the hand of Him who maketh
the valleys stand thick with corn, and the face of
His people to shine though the labor of the olive
fail. There were those three Hebrews. Look
into the blazing mouth of that seven-fold heated
furnace, and at those three men lying bound, and
tell me what is there for them but death. They

THE PRIDE OF CARE. 165

needed no mocking king nor courtiers to tell them
they could not help themselves. Self and all were
in God's hands. The case could not be worse as
men saw it ; and yet, in fact, the case was at its
best. They had nothing but God ; but they had
in God the best that man or angel could have:
the flame burned their bonds, but not them ; and
they rose, and walked in the fire ; and the amazed
spectators saw a fourth walking with them, and
his form was like unto the Son of God.

But let us give a moment to the latter part of
the text. The result of this humbling of self, and
throwing it with its anxiety on God, is quite con-
trary to human logic. The world says, the man
who is humbled is the crushed man, the defeated
man. The world is right, if the man is simply
crushed into submission by overwhelming power ;
but the world is quite wrong if the man has vol-
untarily bowed the high head of his pride, and
has cheerfully yielded up his will with his care
to God. Such humbling, if Scripture is to be
believed, is the way to exaltation : " He that hum-
bleth himself shall be exalted." You see some-
thing of the same kind in ordinary matters. Now
and then you find a man with more conceit than
ability, with more self-confidence than resources,
who attempts to lead a great movement, or to
conduct a great business ; and the very position
brings out his weakness ; and the longer he stays
in it, the more useless and dangerous he is, and
the more men say he is a fool and a weakling.
And yet not a few men have had the sense or the

166 THE PRIDE OF CARE.

grace to see the true state of the ease in time, and
to swallow pride, and frankly to confess weakness
by retiring from a place for which they were un-
fit. From that moment they began to rise. They
never rose to the high position which they coveted
at first, but they rose to a true position, which
they could hold ; and that was really higher than
the false position which they could not hold.
They became respectable and useful men, doing
good work in lower places, and winning esteem
and honor ; while, if they had held on to the
higher place, as pride prompted, they would have
won simply contempt and impotence. What is
true in some cases in society is true always of
men in relation to God. The man is always in a
false position, a position he cannot fill, when he
ignores God, and tries to take care of himself.
He is a larger man, a better man, a more efficient
man, by humbling himself under God's hand, and
letting God take care of him. He escapes, I re-
peat, his worst, most consuming anxiety, by escap-
ing from self. In humbling himself under God's
hand, care slips off with self ; and surely a man is
in a better condition to rise when he is lightened
of his anxiety : he is in lighter marching-order.
All other things being equal, he does better and
more effective work when he works joyously.
There is a good deal of good, solid work, I know,
done by men who work under pressure, and with
much burden of care. Sometimes, as I look at
such, I am reminded of Dante's vision of those
who toiled along their gloomy way, with head and

THE PRIDE OF CARE. 167

shoulders bent under the weight of leaden cloaks.
The leaden cloaks are not for children of God and
believers in Christ: "My yoke is easy, and my
burden is light." We shall have true exaltation,
lighter hearts, better work done, more mastery
over the world, less sensitiveness to the shocks of
time and change, —by humbly putting our lives
into God's hands. While we hold by self, we hold
by care. The self which we fondly think is our
buoy is really the weight which is sinking us. We
lay to circumstances and to providences much
that is really the outcome of nothing but our
pride.

And note another thing : the exaltation prom-
ised here will not come at once : " He shall exalt
you in due timer This pride of self is a stubborn
thing, and will not yield without a struggle ; and
you may depend that God will bring us sooner or
later to a definite issue and a hard fight with self.
We shall have to face the question, whether we
will trust self, and live in constant irritation and
fear because our own plans have come short or
our own efforts have failed, or because we have
not won the position or the gains we had marked
out ; or whether we will cut the whole matter short
by saying, " I am in God's hands : let him give me
and do with me as seemeth good to him." That
issue, I say, we have to fight through : there is no
going round it. We are like ships in an ice-pack.
There is clear and deep water beyond ; but there is
no reaching it except by breaking through and
settling the question, whether we will trust self, or

168 THE PRIDE OF CARE.

God. We may stay if we will, and let the ice of
pride and self-will draw closer until it freezes out
the life of God in us. We may, with God's help,
work through into the clear water, and set sail,
and look back with triumph as we see the bristling
mass of cares lying like a dark cloud on the far
horizon : " He shall exalt you in due time." Read
on a little farther in this same chapter, and you
find that thought again : " The God of all grace,
who hath called us unto his eternal glory by Christ
Jesus, after that ye have suffered a while, make
you perfect, stablish, strengthen, settle you." Ah !
that is exaltation indeed : security, steadfastness,
mastery over that which burdens the world, peace
which the world cannot give nor take away.

If there are any of us here so burdened with
anxiety that it has pressed nearly all the sweetness
out of life, let us consider. Perhaps we think
ourselves subjects for compassion. We may be ;
but let us look, and see if we may not be subjects
for repentance.

Possibly we cannot cast off care because we will
not cast off pride. Lay the whole burden of care
on God, if with it you will lay self. Ask yourself
if you are willing to be any thing or nothing, as
God pleases. Only work hard, do your best, con-
secrate your work with prayer ; and then feel that
you may be restful and quiet, and leave every
thing with God.

So with the care which comes about your growth
in grace, comes out of the stubbornness of sin,
comes out of your feeling that you make such

THE PRIDE OF CARE. 169

little headway in the fight with evil. Christ came
that you might lay your sin on him. Because of
your weakness, he shall lead you to the rock which
is higher than you. He bids you do full justice to
his tenderness, and prove his mercy. Yes, —

" There's a wideness in God's mercy
Like the wideness of the sea :
There's a kindness in his justice
Which is more than liberty.

There is plentiful redemption
In the blood that has been shed ■:
There is joy for all the members
In the sorrows of their head.

For the love of God is broader
Than the measure of man's mind,
And the heart of the Eternal
Is most wonderfully kind.

If our love were but more simple,
We should take him at his word ;
And our lives would be all sunshine
In the sweetness of our Lord."

X.

THE PLOUGH AND THE KINGDOM.

X.
THE PLOUGH AND THE KINGDOM.

" But Jesus said unto him, No man, having put his hand to the
plough, and looking tack, is fit for the kingdom of God." — Luke
ix. 62.

IF yon can dismiss from your minds the figure
of the modern farmer, with his polished plough-
share leaving the deep, clean furrow in its wake,
and put in its place the figure out of which Jesus
made this little picture, — the Eastern ploughman
doubled over the pointed stick which serves as a
plough, — you will see at once how vividly the
absurdity of a man's ploughing and looking be-
hind him at the same time would have impressed
Christ's hearers. Even a modern ploughman,
with the best modern plough, will make sad work
if he do not keep his eyes straight before him.
Anyway, that is true of ploughing which is true
of any other kind of work. One whose interest
is half in front and half behind him will be only
a half-way man in any thing to which he may set
his hand. All good work requires concentration.
No good work is done into which a man does not
throw himself wholly.

This picture of a slouching ploughman is the

173

174 THE PLOUGH AND THE KINGDOM.

form into which our Lord throws the lesson of to-
day, — a lesson which is not confined to the text,
but which runs through the entire section, from
the fifty-seventh verse to the end of the chapter.

What this lesson is, will appear as we briefly
review the contents of the section. Our Lord was
about to take his final departure from Galilee. As
he walked, a man approached him. Luke says, " a
certain man ; " and Matthew says he was a " scribe."
However that may be, he was, like so many others,
moved powerfully by the words and works and
personal magnetism of Christ ; and he conceived a
desire to become one of his followers. Accord-
ingly he volunteered his services : " I will follow
thee whithersoever thou goest." I think some of
us, at least, have begun to see what a very serious
proposal that was. It is no light matter to com-
mit one's self to follow such a master as Christ
whithersoever he may go, for the shrewdest man
can never predict what direction Christ will take.
The most sincere and self-consecrated man will
always have an element of surprise in his walk
after Christ ; for the simple reason, that Christ will
lead him in God's ways and in God's kingdom,
which is full of surprises, and where he will find
out, if he did not realize it before, that God's ways
are not his ways.

Evidently no such thought as this had occurred
to this enthusiastic volunteer. If it had, he might
have hesitated. Peter, Christ's own disciple, after
a long acquaintance with the Lord, and knowing
that he was going to prison and to judgment, said

THE PLOUGH AND THE KINGDOM. 175

very much the same thing as this person ; but his
enthusiasm oozed out by the time he reached the
court of the judgment-hall ; and he staid behind,
and denied his Lord. This man had conceived of
no difficulty in the case, — at least, of none which
he was not persuaded of his own ability to sur-
mount.

Christ loves enthusiasm, even if it is not wise.
Calculation sometimes takes the breath out of
enthusiasm. That young man who came to him,
asking, " What shall I do that I may inherit eter-
nal life ?" had not counted the cost. Yet Jesus
loved him. Christ is drawn to the man who is
kindled by him. Even the unintelligent impulse
of him who does not count the cost, is in the right
direction. That enthusiasm is an invaluable ele-
ment of Christian power if it can only be somehow
perpetuated in a life of steady service and self-
denial. If it can be wedded to solid conviction
and settled purpose, it will carry every thing before
it.

Nevertheless, our Lord will not let a man enter
his service without a full knowledge of its
conditions. The man shall never have it to say
that he was entrapped into sacrifices and labors
upon which he did not count. You will all recall
our Saviour's words about the building of a house,
and the going out to war without counting the
cost ; and the same thing comes out in his reply to
this volunteer : " Follow me if you will ; only re-
member that, in taking my part, you take the part
of one who does not fare as well as the foxes or

176 THE PLOUGH AND THE KINGDOM.

the birds — the part of a wandering, homeless
man, with no definite position. The foxes have
holes, and the birds have nests, but the Son of
man hath not where to lay his head. If you come
with me, you identify yourself with my lot, and
share the hardness of my life." Nothing more is
told us. The account of that interview stops
short ; and the natural inference, I think, would be,
that the man's enthusiasm was arrested all of a
sudden by the revelation of such a possibility as
this. It was a delightful and inspiring thing, no
doubt, to be identified with a man who could
speak such words and do such works as Jesus did ;
but then, the foxes and the birds ! No : he must
at least think further of the matter ; and so we
hear no more of our enthusiastic volunteer.

The next man, Jesus addresses with his familiar
invitation, " Follow me." He, too, is a ready man,
kindled like the first ; but he is naturally a more
cautious man. Christ seeks all men ; but some men
go half-way to meet him, others make him go the
whole way. This man is ready enough, only he
has a filial duty to perform first. His father is
dead, and he would pay the respect which a son
owes in such a case ; and no one would be more
ready than Christ to acknowledge the force of
such a claim. But this case was peculiar. It is
more a representative case than we are wont to
think, — representative, I mean, of one of those
decisive crises when a man is brought to a choice
between two courses, either of which is to give
character to his whole life. Going after Christ

THE PLOUGH AND THE KINGDOM 177

was a different thing from going after anybody-
else. He might attach himself to any party-leader,
or to a side of any temporary movement, and, as
to the rest of his life, go on in the ordinary course ;
and he might withdraw from such connections at
pleasure. But this was a moral issue. To decide
for or against Christ was to choose an economy of
life. Crises of that kind come to men outside of
the religious sphere. When a community, in the
old colonial days, was suddenly attacked by the
Indians, every man must drop every thing else, and
go out to repel the savages. He must leave his
team unyoked in the field, his plough in the furrow,
his sick wife in the house, his dead child or father
unburied, and seize his gun, and take his place in
the ranks. You are to remember, further, that this
was the man's only chance to attach himself to
Jesus. The Lord, as we have said, was going
forth from Galilee to return no more. According
to the Jewish law, the pollution from the presence
of a dead body lasted seven days. By that time
the man's first enthusiasm would have become
chilled, and Jesus would be out of reach. The
man evidently thought that it was only a question
of a little delay in following Christ : Jesus knew
that it was a question of following him now or
never.

Then comes a third. He offers himself also ;
but he, too, is not ready to go at once. He wants
to go home, and take leave of his family and
friends. And in this case, as in the last, Christ
assumes that there is a moral crisis. He must de-

178 THE PLOUGH AND THE KINGDOM.

cide promptly ; and, if he decides to follow Christ,
he must promptly forsake all, once for all, and fol-
low him. Let him go back to his house, and the
tears and remonstrances of friends and kindred
would shake his resolution. They would say, " At
any rate, if you must go, do not go to-day : let us
have one more family gathering. Let us once
more sit down to our table together. Go the
rounds once more, and say good-by to this and
that friend." He never would have gone after
Jesus. Christ says to him, in effect, " If you go
after me, the course is straightforward. You must
give up every thing for me ; take me in place of
every thing ; give me your whole heart : and, if
part of your heart is left behind with friends and
home and old associations, it is of no use for you
to go. You are not fit for the kingdom of God,
any more than a man is fit to plough a field who
is constantly turning from his plough and his team
to look backward.

By this time you have caught the lesson of the
text. It is the lesson of committal, — the truth,
that, to follow Christ is to commit one's self wholly
and irrevocably to Christ.

And, before we go farther, observe what Christ
means here by the phrase " fit for the kingdom of
God." He does not mean that the wavering, half-
hearted, half-committed man shall not get his
reward in heaven ; though that is true. The king-
dom of God is not a matter of heaven only. The
man enters the kingdom of God from the moment
that he engages to follow Christ, or, to carry out

THE PLOUGH AND THE KINGDOM. 179

the figure of the text, from the moment that he
enters his plough. God has a kingdom on earth
as well as in heaven, and the sphere of that king-
dom is the sphere of Christ's service. One is
here under substantially the same moral laws as
those which prevail in heaven : so that the ques-
tion of fitness for the kingdom of God which
Christ raises is not a question merely of one's fit-
ness for heaven by and by ; it is also a question of
fitness to live the life, and to meet the require-
ments of the kingdom of God, here and now. We
are to follow Christ here. The field is the world,
and our ploughing is to-day's duty. The kingdom
of God involves laws which are to be obeyed here,
sacrifices which are to be made here, now, to-day,
and every day. The kingdom of God is already
set up in the earth, and has a work to do in the
world. The question is, whether you and I are
fit to do it ; and Christ here tells us that we are
not fit for it unless we are wholly committed to
him.

Again, let me call your attention to the figure
in which the truth is set. A man cannot plough,
and be looking behind him half the time. Such
a man is not fit for a ploughman. You say, Of
course not. That is a law of all good work, that
a man cannot do it well with half his attention ;
but why not, then, a law of work and life in the
kingdom of God ? We have a great deal yet to
learn about the words of Christ ; and one of the '
most important things is, that these apparently
commonplace truths and familiar laws which he so

180 THE PLOUGH AND THE KINGDOM.

often cites are merely sides, or ends if you please,
of truths and laws which hold in the whole spirit-
ual world. It is not, that, in this little picture of
an incompetent farm-hand, Christ gives us some-
thing like a law of the kingdom of God. He
states the law itself. Good work requires the en-
tire committal of the worker. It is the law of
Christian service and of ploughing alike. It is
this fact which lifts utterances like our text out of
the region of commonplace. They seem common-
place where they touch us, but their line runs out
to truths which are not commonplace. The law
of the plough followed up appears as the law of
the kingdom of God. Now, this law of entire
committal is familiar enough to us in its worldly
applications. It is the great law of success in
ordinary callings. When you choose a calling in
life, it is said of you, " He is going to devote his
life to business or to law or to medicine." And
you know very well, that, if you are to succeed in
either, the expression is none too strong. If you
are going to be a successful doctor, you must give
up being a successful merchant. You cannot ex-
pect to be a power in science or in letters. You
must commit and devote yourself wholly to the
thing which you have chosen. And the kingdom
of God is a more serious matter than law or medi-
cine or business. Not one of these touches your
real inner life. You may fail in business, and yet
be the same man you were before you failed, —
your real manhood as sound and true as when you
handled hundreds of thousands. But the king-

THE PLOUGH AND THE KINGDOM. 181

dom of God does touch your inmost self. The
quality of your manhood turns on the nature of
your relation to it. The issue is between the
world and your life. You cannot fail in the king-
dom of God and be the same man as if you had
not failed. Failure there is radical. Moreover,
if the variety and magnitude of business or pro-
fessional interests demand your whole energy,
much more surely the interests of the kingdom of
God. It is harder to work out a Christ-like char-
acter than to make a fortune. It is harder to
overcome the world than to outride a panic or to
withstand the fluctuations of the markets. It is
harder to assert the character of the meek and
lowly Jesus amid surrounding worldliness and
against the upheavals of passion than to keep
your credit unimpaired on 'change. The demands
of the kingdom of God admit of no division
of purpose, no half interest, no looking back.
Ploughing is forward work, — all in advance.
Each of us has a furrow to cut through that sec-
tion of the kingdom of God which includes our
lives. There is no call, there is no time, to look
back.

And, as a consequence, when you enter your
plough in this spirit of entire committal, you agree
to take whatever comes in the line of your plough-
ing, and to plough through it or round it, and in
no case to turn back because of it. As I have
said before, the kingdom of God is full of sur-
prises ; and you will come upon a good many un-
expected things, and things as hard as they are

182 THE PLOUGH AND THE KINGDOM.

unexpected. Your plough will often strike a
rock under the greenest turf, and just where you
thought the ploughing was going to be easiest.
Your ploughing will not always lie on straight
lines, either. There are curved as well as straight
lines in God's plans, ends reached by indirection
as well as directly. A farmer likes to cut straight
furrows, and to make a handsome-looking field
with the straight parallels ; but God is more con-
cerned about our making a fruitful field than a
handsome one, and will not always let us follow
the straight lines of our plans. Any way, straight
or crooked, you commit yourself to take what
comes. It is no part of your business or mine in
God's kingdom to make our conditions. When
you give yourself to Christ, and enter your plough
in his field, he arranges the conditions, and bids
you work them out. If the conditions are to be
changed, the right change will develop in faithful
working out. I remember once, when travelling
among the Spanish mountains in the midst of one
of the loveliest scenes I ever beheld, my eye rested
on a little tract on the side of a savage height.
The patch was literally sown with rocks, and yet
it had been most carefully ploughed. I suppose
there was not a furrow in it that ran straight for
five feet at a time ; but the ploughman had not
looked back. He had ploughed on, round the
rocks and between them. It was a good, thorough
piece of work. So God selects the field for us, with
its conditions, — rocks in one man's field, stumps
in another's. The simple question is, Shall we

THE PLOUGH AND THE KINGDOM. 183

plough that field ? God does not take away the
stumps and rocks : what we do with them answers
the question whether or not we are tit for the
kingdom of God. Last week there came into my
study a pastor of many years' standing, — a faith-
ful, able, useful servant of God. I remember
when I first heard him, over twenty-five years
ago, when he stood before a great audience in the
vigor of his early manhood, his hair black as a
raven's wing. I remember how he woke the audi-
ence from the lethargy of a summer noon, and
swayed them with his wise and bright words ; and
his speech that day stands out in my memory as
one of the most telling and brilliant I ever heard.
And he sat with me last week, the fire dimmed in
his eye, his hair white as the driven snow, and
went over a part of his history, — told of sickness
and prostration, of burdens lifted in struggling
churches, of divisions and dissensions among his
people, of final success, and peaceful, happy minis-
trations in a thriving church saved and established
by his labor and sacrifice ; and he brought down
his hand with emphasis as he said, "I have learned
this one thing through it all, that God '« work is
bound to go on anyway ; and that the only thing for
us to do, is to stand in our place, and do our work,
whatever comes."

And, my brethren, you all know something about
this in your own lives. You have all felt the jar
when the plough struck a stone. Not one of you
has been able to make straight furrows always.
Not one of you who has tried to serve God faith-

184 THE PLOUGH AND THE KINGDOM.

fully but has come to something in his ploughing
which tempted him to look back; but the only
thing for any of us to do, is to stand in our place,
and do our work. There is no such thing as fail-
ure of faithful work in God's kingdom ; and the
simple reason of that is, because it is in God's
kingdom and not man's ; and God's kingdom must
come, and his will must and will be done in earth
as it is in heaven : " He that goeth forth weeping
and bearing precious seed, shall doubtless come again
with rejoicing, bringing his sheaves with him."

The text presents to us a question of the pres-
ent, a present responsibility. It is not a question
whether you will be fit for heaven by and by, but
whether, by absolute and entire committal to
Christ, you are fit for the service of the kingdom
here and now. Not one of us will venture to say
positively that he is fit for the kingdom. God
works out the problem of his kingdom on earth by
the hands of imperfect men. But Christ puts to
us this morning the great essential of unfitness —
looking back ; a divided interest ; a half-way ser-
vice ; an attempt to keep an eye on the world and
an eye on the plough. Heaven will take care of
itself, and of us if we only plough straight on.
The line of the furrow, faithfully held, will lead
out inevitably to where

" Sweet fields beyond the swelling flood
Stand dressed in living green,"

when the ploughing shall be done ; and the re-
deemed shall walk with Christ by the living

THE PLOUGH AND THE KINGDOM. 185

fountains of waters. Have any of you unfitted
yourselves for to-day's work in God's kingdom by
taking back a part of what you gave to Christ, —
by looking back? There was a time when, in
the first freshness of your consecration to him,
you were ready to say, " I will follow thee whith-
ersoever thou goest." There was a time when
faith was firm, and love burning, and labor for
Christ a joy. Have the heats and languors of
life's high noon paralyzed that first enthusiasm?
Has the noise of the great world's striving and
revelry, borne over the field to your ear, made you
loose your hold on the plough, and turn longingly
from your appointed work ? Have you grown cold
toward Christ and his church, sceptical about the
outcome of Christian work and the destinies of the
kingdom of God, cautious and calculating, and dis-
posed to spare self as much as may be ? If that be
so, — which God forbid ! — the Saviour meets you
this day with the warning, " No man, having put
his hand to the plough, and looking back, is fit for
the kingdom of God."

XI.
JOY AND JUDGMENT.

XI.

JOY AND JUDGMENT.

" Rejoice, O young man, in thy youth ; and let thy heart cheer
thee in the days of thy youth, and walk in the ways of thine
heart, and in the sight of thine eyes : but know thou, that for all
these things God will bring thee into judgment. Therefore re-
move sorrow from thy heart, and put away evil from thy flesh :
for childhood and youth are vanity.

"Remember now thy Creator in the days of thy youth, while
the evil days come not, nor the years draw nigh, when thou shalt
say, I have no pleasure in them." — Eccles. xi. 9, 10; xii. 1.

PERHAPS you think those opening words are
said sarcastically. " Oh, yes, young man ! en-
joy your life ; be merry ; have your fling ; you will
find out to your cost what it all amounts to when
the time of judgment comes round." That is the
way the words have often been interpreted, and
yet nothing can be farther from the truth. Our
translators have slipped in a "but" where there
ought to be an "and," and have thus made the
preacher set the joy of youth and the judgment
of God over against each other : " Rejoice in thy
youth, but know that God will bring you into judg-
ment for your rejoicing." Whereas, in fact, the
judgment is put as part of the rejoicing : " Rejoice
in thy youth ; and know that, respecting all these,
God will bring thee into judgment."

189

190 JOY AND JUDGMENT.

The preacher, in short, frankly commends to
youth a joyful, cheerful life as its natural and
proper heritage. He means just what he says.
He does not invite youth to a feast, and then set
up the skeleton of judgment at the table to make
him feast with fear and trembling. There is no
covert irony in the call to rejoice. The judgment
is brought in, but in a way, as we shall see, which
ministers to the rejoicing instead of clouding it:
" Rejoice, O young man, in thy youth ! childhood
and youth are vanity; they pass quickly away;
age with its infirmity will come ; pleasure will lose
its zest ; enjoy the beauty, the grace, the pleasure,
of the world while you may."

Possibly, these may seem strange words from
the man to whom we owe the phrase, " Vanity of
vanities ; all is vanity ! " And, if so, the strange-
ness may stimulate you to study that old book,
from which, it may be, you are repelled by its hard
and dry name. There is nothing dry about the
book. No book in the Bible is racier. It throbs
with life and feeling ; it is full of ripe wisdom ; it
is one of the most consolatory and cheerful por-
tions of Holy Writ.

Let us look at the two parts of the text sepa-
rately, — joy and judgment ; and then we shall see
how they fit into each other, and are parts of one
great truth. And let me say, in advance, that
we need be under no apprehension of finding the
stringency of duty relaxed, or a life of sensual
pleasure encouraged, by these first, hearty, cheer-
ful words of the wise preacher : —

JOY AND JUDGMENT. 191

" Rejoice, O young man, in thy youth ; and let
thy heart cheer thee in thy youthful days, and
pursue the ways of thine heart, and the things
which are seen by the eyes." We are not listen-
ing to a Christian moralist : nevertheless, the sen-
timent is Christian. "Childhood and youth are
vanity ; " that is to say, they are transient, fleeting.
" Therefore," say a certain class of religionists,
"extinguish their natural instincts as summarily
as possible. They are transient ; therefore, they
are of no acconnt. They are ' vanity ' ; therefore,
to enjoy them is dangerous, if it be not sinful."
But the logic of our old preacher takes a different
line. Childhood and youth, or youth and man-
hood, are fleeting ; therefore, " Banish sorrow from
thy mind, and put away sadness from thy body."
He evidently does not think that the brevity and
transitoriness of a thing is a reason for despising
it. Neither do you and I, when we deal with ordi-
nary matters. The rose which you pluck in the
morning withers before the next morning, but
you delight yourself with its color and perfume
none the less while it lasts. A summer morning,
with its dewy freshness, is a tiring of only an hour
or two ; but you do not, for that reason, shut your-
self up in your chamber, and refuse to breathe
the morning scents, and to look upon the sparkle
of the dewdrops. Youth and fresh manhood are
things only of a few years ; but their brevity is,
to the preacher, the reason why they should be
enjoyed. Those have done infinite damage who
have set on foot the notion that youth, from the

192 JOY AND JUDGMENT.

moment it turns to religion, surrenders all pleas-
ure, lightness of heart, and robust enjoyment ; and
such teachers have been betrayed into this terri-
ble and fatal mistake through their failure to see
that God's training is not to stunt or to crush out
human nature, but to develop and elevate it. Our
Lord, Christ, you will remember, said some very
severe things about those teachers who had made
religion a burden instead of a joy and a rest to the
people. He called them thieves and robbers, who
had stolen away the blessedness from life, and had
tried to make it as small and lean a thing as possi-
ble ; whereas, " I," said he, " came that they may
have life, and may have it abundantly." Some
people reason as if Christ had come only to reveal
another life, whereas he came also to teach men
how to make the most and best of this life at every
stage. When a man is rooted and grounded in
the love of Christ, Paul tells us he grows up, not
into a cherub or an archangel, but into a perfect
man ; and the pattern of this manhood is Christ.
What the forces of Nature may do with the rose
after it has withered and dropped from the stem,
into what new combinations, or into what new
forms of life its juices and fibre may enter, is a
distinct question. Meanwhile, to-day the forces of
Nature are all concentrating themselves to make a
perfect rose. What you and I may be after death
is indeed an interesting and a vital question ; but
it does not set aside that other question, — how to
make the best and most of this life in all its stages.
These successive stages of Hfe are not independent.

JOY AND JUDGMENT. 193

Childhood perpetuates its quality in youth, and
youth in manhood, and manhood again in age.
You realize the divine ideal of manhood to the
degree in which you are true to the divine ideal
of youth : " Remember thy Creator in the days of
thy youth" Youth is pointed back to his creation.
What stamp did the Creator set upon it ? What
provision did he make for youth ? What did he
mean youth to be ? Obedient, reverent, pure, dili-
gent, — all that certainly ; yet as certainly fresh,
joyous, vigorous. Remember thy Creator, to be
in youth what he meant thee to be then. God has
an ideal for the blossom as well as for the fruit,
and the best fruit comes through the best-devel-
oped blossom. The work of Christ the Redeemer
does not contradict the work of God the Creator.
God made man in his own image. Christ comes
to bring out that image in men ; and Christ set it
on childhood and youth no less than on manhood ;
and God put into humanity, perceptions of beauty,
the sense of humor, the love of society, suscepti-
bility to harmony and color ; and to develop God's
image is not to crush out these faculties, but to
learn to use them. God knows that these facul-
ties are freshest and keenest in youth, — that joy
is native to youth as blossoms to spring. And
the type of youth is not, therefore, the old man,
burdened with cares, tired of the world, and sad-
dened by experience. A joyless youth is as unnat-
ural as ice in August: "Rejoice, O young man, in
thy youth."

It may be said, " At any rate, this aspect of the

194 JOY AND JUDGMENT.

truth does not need pressing in our day, and it
were better to warn youth against the coming
judgment." And it seems to be assumed, more-
over, that there is an antagonism between these
two ideas of joy and judgment ; that the one ex-
cludes the other ; that the thought of judgment is
enough of itself to quench all rejoicing in youth.
But the peculiarity of our text is, that it rejects
this antagonism, and makes this coming judgment
a cause of rejoicing — a stimulant of the joy of
youth as well as a warning : " Rejoice, and know
that God will bring thee into judgment. Banish,
therefore, sorrow from thy mind, and put away
sadness from thy body."

Whenever this book may have been written, we
find in it numerous allusions to a state of society
which give these words about a future judgment
a peculiar meaning and force ; for the book depicts
a society under a capricious despotism, with all its
corruptions and miseries. The grandees revel in
palaces, vineyards, and pleasure-grounds ; kings are
childish, and princes given to revelry and drunken-
ness ; fools are uplifted, and noble men degraded ;
riches are not for the intelligent, or favor for the
learned ; to become rich is to multiply extortions ;
life stands at the caprice of power ; sensuality runs
riot. " In short, the whole political fabric was
falling into disrepair and decay, the rain leaking
through the rotting roof; while the miserable peo-
ple were ground down with ruinous exactions, in
order that the rulers might revel on undisturbed."
And as the book reveals this fearful social con-

JOY AND JUDGMENT. 195

dition, so, likewise, it gives expression to the tem-
per which grows up in men's minds after a long
course of such oppressions, — a kind of fatalism and
hopelessness which tempts one to yield passively
to the current of affairs ; to believe that God has
ceased to rule, and that order and right have van-
ished from the world; to snatch at every pleas-
ure ; to drown care in sensuality, rather than try to
maintain an integrity which is sure to be rewarded
with personal and social ruin. That kind of tem-
per, if it once gained headway, would affect all
classes and ages. In the nobler and better-seasoned
characters, it would become a proud despair; in
vulgar minds, a bestial greed, and an untrammeled
selfishness ; in youth, a prompter to unbounded
sensuality.

You can see, therefore, what a powerful antidote
to this temper would be furnished by the truth of
a future judgment. Once lodge firmly the truth
that men are moving on through all the hard
and bitter and unjust conditions of their time to a
supreme tribunal, and you have made it impossi-
ble to believe that the world is lawless. A final
judgment implies a law ; and a law implies a law-
giver, and an authority to administer and vindicate
the law. Thus the truth carries with it both com-
fort and obligation. There is a divine order in the
world ; we are not finally at the mercy of chance
or of men's caprice : the order will vindicate itself
in time, and with itself will vindicate those who
hold by it. So long as there is a judgment, wrong
is not eternal, and retribution is a fact. There-

196 JOY AND JUDGMENT.

fore, it is better to do right, notwithstanding the
"oppressor's wrong and the proud man's contu-
mely." It is better to live the life of duty and of
charity described in this chapter ; to cast the bread
upon the waters, though it seem to be lost ; to
share even the few good things of life with seven
and with eight; to sow the seed morning and
evening, though unknowing whether this or that
shall prosper ; better for the youth to curb passion,
and to hold by purity and truth, and to cultivate
duty. There is an order, a divine order, in the
world ; and an order carries the fact of judgment
along with it. So, too, it is better not to give way
to despair. One can afford to be cheerful, even
amid oppressions and troubles like these, if the
time is short, and a day coming in which wrong
shall be righted, and worth acknowledged and fidel-
ity rewarded.

The judgment is a fact which confronts us as
Christians, — a fact emphasized by the words of
Christ and of the apostles, and still further empha-
sized by the relation in which Christ puts himself
to it as the judge of all men. And the attitude of
even our Christian thought towards it is largely
that of terror and apprehension. Turn over the
hymns in our own collection under the head of
" judgment," and this will be evident. The key to
the popular Christian sentiment is the familiar old
Latin hymn, —

" That day of wrath, that dreadful day."

Of course, the terrible element is there in large

JOY AND JUDGMENT. 197

measure. The element of solemnity must, in any
case, dominate our thought of the last day. It can-
not be other than a serious matter to appear before
our Creator, and to give an account of the deeds
done in the body. And assuredly it will be a day
of wrath to rebels against God and to rejecters of
Christ. An infallible and final judgment, which
shall pronounce a man's life-work worthless, and
the man himself a moral failure, must be woe
and terror unutterable. But, withal, the truth has
another side. It is not mere fancy which sees in
the Judgment Day a day of consolation as well as of
wrath. That other side is recognized in Scripture.
Turn, for instance, to the ninety-sixth and ninety-
eighth Psalms, composed during the period of the
captivity, probably the same period in which this
preacher wrote. What a glorious outburst of
praise is this, in which all nature is summoned to
join ! " Let the heavens rejoice, and let the earth
be glad; let the sea make a noise, and all that
therein is : let the floods clap their hands, and let
the hills be joyful together before Jehovah; for he
cometh to judge the earth. With righteousness shall
he judge the world, and the people with equity."
Or turn over to the Epistle to the Hebrews, and
hear the apostle comparing the terrors which
waited on the giving of the law at Sinai with the
delights and privileges which attend the new cove-
nant: "Ye are not come unto a mount that might
be touched, and that burned with fire, and unto
blackness and tempest. But ye are come unto
mount Zion, and unto the city of the living God,

198 JOY AND JUDGMENT.

the heavenly Jerusalem, and to innumerable hosts
of angels, to the general assembly and church of
the firstborn who are enrolled in heaven, to the
spirits of just men made perfect, and to Jesus the
mediator of a new covenant, and to the blood
of sprinkling that speaketh better than that of
Abel." What a group of joys ! what a catalogue of
privileges ! and into the midst of these is thrown
one more : " and to God, the judge of all" It is
not a discordant note. It is meant to accord, and
does accord, with those sweetest of all sounds, —
Jesus the Mediator, and the blood of sprinkling.
The Mediator is the Judge, and the blood of sprin-
kling has taken the terror out of judgment.

Why, then, should a man, young or old, have
the work or the pleasure peculiar to his age and
circumstances clouded by the anticipation of judg-
ment? Why may not the young man lawfully
rejoice in his youth, provided he remembers his
Creator ? The mistake is in divorcing the Creator
and Judge from the joy of life ; whereas, God is
the true joy of life. " In thy presence," says the
Psalmist, "is fulness of joy; at thy right hand
are eternal pleasures." That does not mean heaven
only. If David, as seems probable, was thinking
of the future state when he wrote these words, he
was equally thinking of the present life ; for he
says, " Thou wilt show me the path of life : in thy
presence is fulness of joy." And if God is in the
life of to-day as Creator and Counsellor and Admin-
istrator, he is, by virtue of this, in the life of to-day
as Judge. If you and I are moral beings, living

JOY AND JUDGMENT. 199

under a moral order, the element of judgment is in
to-day's life as really as it will be on the last day.
Every day's life is a test. Every day's life brings
us to the bar of that moral economy where con-
science sits as God's assessor and deputy. Every
day's life is rounded with the approving or con-
demning verdict of conscience. God is not con-
cealing and hoarding up his judgments, only to let
them break forth as terrible surprises at the last
day. Conscience anticipates daily the final ver-
dict. The moment we are introduced to the great
ideas of right and wrong, that moment we are
introduced to the idea of judgment. And, if the
fact that God is our Judge is in itself fatal to all
joy and good cheer, that fact is fatal to all possible
joy in God ; for God as Judge goes with God as
Creator and Father and Friend. He is Judge by
virtue of his being all these. Why then, I repeat,
should the young man not rejoice in his youth, or
a man of any age in the conditions peculiar to
that age, provided they remember their Creator ?
Whence come the pure pleasures of youth, — its
hopefulness, its energy, its mirth, its sense of
beauty? Do they not come from God? Is he
not the Creator of these as well as of bone and
muscle? And if these gifts are recognized as
God's, are they not at once sweetened, and guarded
against abuse by that very fact ? Christ tells us
that one office of the Holy Spirit is to " convince
of judgment ; " that is, to show men clearly that
all sin deserves and will receive the judgment of
God. Is it not, then, a cause of rejoicing, that God

200 JOY AND JUDGMENT.

guards our pleasures against abuse, that he teaches
us what true pleasure is, that he sets up a sign
marked "judgment" at the border-line of excess?
Is it not a real cause of rejoicing that God restrains
us from incurring the judgment of sin ? Can that
be real pleasure which ends in rebuke and punish-
ment? And, therefore, when we recognize our
legitimate pleasures as God's gift, our joy in them
is heightened. We may enjoy without fear. God
will not condemn what himself has ordained and
created ; and when we look forward to the great
judgment, the eternal life beyond, these very
pleasures take on a prophetic character. They
are foretastes, earnests of something better beyond.
The pleasure at his right hand here, promises ful-
ness of joy at his right hand forevermore. When
we have learned that God is love, and is with us
lovingly in this world, — with us, I say, down here
amid these earthly conditions, helping us in every
possible way to enjoy what is true, and to do what
is right and best, and not far above us, regarding
us as a critic, and seeking only to find fault with
us, — when we have learned this, I say, are we to
conclude, that, in the final judgment to which we
are moving on, God is going to throw off this char-
acter, and appear simply as an inexorable critic ?

" Prepare to meet thy God ! " We hear it said
in awful tones, as one would say to a convicted
murderer, " Prepare for the scaffold ! " As if meet-
ing God, the God we name " love " and " father,"
were the most dreadful of human experiences.
But we do not talk in that way about any human

JOY AND JUDGMENT. 201

object of love. When that wife or child or hus-
band or brother of yours has been long gone across
the sea, and the despatch is put into your hand
that the ship is down at quarantine, there is no
terror nor sorrow in your preparing to meet them.
How your feet speed to the wharf ! How your
eyes are strained to detect among the crowding
masts the first cloud of smoke from the steamer's
funnel ! How you can scarce restrain your impa-
tience until the ship is made fast, and the plank let
down, that you may spring on board, and greet the
object of your love ! And you are the one who

sings, —

" My Saviour whom absent I love,
Whom not having seen I adore."

And

" On earth we want the sight
Of our Redeemer's face."

And you are afraid to meet Him !

You see, then, how this wise old preacher, lifting
up his voice in the very midst of a horrible and
apparently hopeless social condition, found, in the
fact of a coming judgment and of a future life, a
basis for an exhortation to hopefulness and cheer-
ful discharge of duty as well as a warning against
sloth and sensuality. It is for us to find the same,
and our doing so depends on one thing simply :
remembering our Creator, early and late, in youth
and throughout. There is nothing but terror in
judgment if God be left out of to-day's life. There
need be no terror in it if we take our Creator and
our Judge into our life to-day and every day. Our

202 JOY AND JUDGMENT.

God, into whose hand we put ours with confiding
faith, is not going to lead us to the judgment-seat,
only to dash away our hand, and mount the throne,
and thunder denunciation at us. If he has minis-
tered comfort and pleasure to us along our earthly
way, depend upon it these are only a foretaste of
larger comfort and perfect rest by and by. To him
who remembers his Creator, the judgment will be
fruition and not blight. You profess, my brother,
to live your life by faith. Of your own choice you
cast in your lot with the unseen Christ, and staked
every thing on his promise, against the remon-
strances of the worldly wise, it may be, against
temptations of worldly policy. The great feature
of that day will be the revelation of that unseen
Christ, and the consequent vindication of your
faith. You have made your decisions in this life
according to his tests, — tests which the world has
pronounced fanciful and fallacious. You have
brought your dealings to the standard of his char-
acter and example, and have judged them right or
wrong according to these. Then He himself shall
appear on the throne of judgment. All these cen-
turies he has been trying to make the world recog-
nize him as Judge : now they shall be compelled to
recognize him, and to confess that his judgments
are just. You have put your trust for salvation in
the blood of the everlasting covenant. You have
pinned your faith to a crucified Saviour in the face
of philosophy's reasonings against the reality and
virtue of the Atonement. Jesus, the Mediator of a
new covenant, will then appear as God, the Judge

JOY AND JUDGMENT. 203

of all : your faith will be vindicated ; and the cross,
that stumbling-block to the Jew, that folly to the
Greek, that symbol to the world of degradation
and ignominy, shall stand out brighter than all
Heaven's morning stars, as the sign of eternal vic-
tory and glory. You have worked faithfully, and
have gotten no earthly reward for it. The Judg-
ment will give you your reward. You have been
misunderstood, wrongfully accused : the Judgment
shall set you right. Your heart has been hot over
wrongs and cruelties, cheats and shams, which you
could not help. You shall see them meet their
due there. You shall see them stand in their
naked vileness, blasted with the eternal curse of
the Judge of all. You have had sorrow and pain
and disappointment here : little of the world's pity
has come to you. You have been tempted to think
the award of Providence a harsh one. God shall
show you then why it all was, and

" Heaven's eternal bliss shall pay
For all his children suffer here."

XII.

SILENT BEFORE GOD.

XII.

SILENT BEFORE GOD.

"I was dumb, I opened not my mouth ; because thou didst
it." — Ps. xxxix. 9,

THIS psalm is the utterance of a man in trou-
ble. It thrills with a strong but repressed
feeling. The writer is striving for resignation, but
not wholly resigned ; afraid of dishonoring God by
a hasty word, yet longing for light from heaven.
His heart is hot within him : as he muses over
the brevity of life and the vanity of man, as he
thinks how all his fathers were strangers and pil-
grims as he is, — with the same troubles, the same
problems, the same sense of desolation, — the fire
burns ; his soul is in a ferment.

In a thoughtful man, trouble always doubles it-
self. Added to the smart of the immediate afflic-
tion is the moral problem which it raises, — the
great question, raised anew by each successive
generation of thinkers and believers, of the reason
and the justice of God's administration in the
world, of the permission of evil, of the tendency
and destiny of this vain show called life. Every
special sorrow or disaster is a stream, setting to-

207

208 SILENT BEFORE GOD.

wards this unfathomable ocean of thought with a
swift and resistless current.

The psalm, I need hardly say, represents a famil-
iar experience. If the world, is not made up of
great thinkers, it is full of people who feel deeply ;
and deep feeling is thought in solution, — none the
less so because they are few who can precipitate
the thought, and crystallize it.

The psalm, as I have said, indicates strong re-
pression as well as strong feeling. The writer is
on his guard against hasty speech : " I said, I will
take heed to my ways, that I sin not with my
tongue : I will keep my mouth with a bridle, while
the wicked is before me. I held my peace even
from good." This was the dictate of a goodly
prudence. Conscious of the excited state of his
heart, he was afraid lest he should say something
out of its abundance which might dishonor God in
the eyes of wicked men who were watching him.
But in our text we get down, I think, to a deeper
reason for silence. The man seems to be so over-
come by the grandeur and the mystery of God's
dealing with him that he is forced to be silent.
Ordinary sorrow tends to vent itself in speech.
Some mysteries, which present a point of light
here and there, we discuss ; we find a kind of sat-
isfaction in comparing views, and suggesting pos-
sible solutions : but now and then we are brought
face to face with a tremendous experience, where
we instinctively concede that there is nothing to
be said. God has done it : that is all. The thing
gives no clew to itself: we stand like a belated

SILENT BEFORE GOD. 209

traveller before the closed gate of an Egyptian
temple, rising, low-browed and grim, under the
stars, and no sound answers our knock. We must
sit down and wait.

This, then, is the simple, stern picture of our
text, — a man in silence before the truth, God did
it!

It does not seem at first as if much can be
worked out from those two factors, yet let us not
be too hasty ; and let us say at once that this text,
and whatever we may be able to draw from it, are
not for an atheist. The text assumes God to be a
fact, and further assumes faith in God. We are
not going to these words for proof of God's being
or of God's providence, but, taking both these for
granted, to see if we can get out of these two
naked facts any light upon the relation between
the providence and its subject, between God and
the man who is dumb before his stroke, and be-
wildered by his mystery.

" Thou didst it ! " In the first place, then, it is
something to have gotten firm hold of a fact. A
grea,t deal is gained when the sorrow, however
severe, or the mystery, however dark, has been
traced up to God. When we can say, not some-
thing, but someone, did it, the matter is greatly
simplified. We have no longer to count chances.
Whatever we may think of the justice or the rea-
son or the quality of the dispensation, we know
its source. Our questioning has no longer to
range about the realms of chance, or the possible
combinations of natural forces : it is confined to

210 SILENT BEFORE GOD.

God. The origin of the thing is fixed. God did
it. We know at least whom to question, if we do
not get an answer. Though the light for which
we are looking may be hidden by clouds, we at
least know whither to direct our telescope. If
there is any solution to be given, we are on the
right road and in the right attitude when our face
is turned towards God.

The fact, indeed, reduces us to silence ; but let
us be sure that we understand the meaning of the
hand that is laid for the time over our mouth.
It need not mean that God is rebuking our in-
quiry, or forbidding us to pursue it. It cannot
mean that God is tantalizing us. It need not
even mean that he intends to deny us a solution.
It may mean that he is putting us in the way of a
solution. A teacher sets for a boy a hard problem
in algebra. The boy goes resolutely to work.
The day passes, and he cannot solve it, He
takes it home with him, and works at it there.
He comes back next day, and all day he is busy
with his problem ; and towards the close of the
school-day, with his face flushed, and with perhaps
an angry tremor in his voice, he comes to the
teacher, and says, " I cannot do it : " and then he
begins to talk passionately, to tell what methods
he has tried, to hint that the teacher may have
made a mistake in his statement, to complain that
this or that in his algebra is not clearly defined.
The teacher sees the difficulty; and, as the first
step toward clearing it up, he quietly says, "Be
still ! Do not talk any more ! I set the problem,

SILENT BEFORE GOD. 211

and I know it is right." And if he says no more
for the time, and the boy goes back to his seat, he
has gained something in that interview. There is
power in the thought which the lad turns over in his
mind, — " This problem was set by somebody that
knows. My teacher, whom I have always found
wise and truthful, did it." The thought that there
may have been a mistake in the statement of the
sum goes out of his mind, and the matter is thus
far relieved, at any rate : and, under the impulse
of that relief, he may attack the question again,
and successfully ; or, if not, he will gain by silence,
by restraint. Let the teacher speak, and let him
simply listen. The teacher wisely silences him,
not to check his inquiry, but to bring his mind
into the right condition to receive explanation.

Just so, we are often, in the presence of our
sorrows or of our hard questions, like this Psalm-
ist, — our heart hot within us, our mind a ferment
of wild questionings. The best thing for God to
do with us then is to silence us, and to set us
pondering the naked truth, — God did it ! ponder-
ing it without argument, without debate, without
remonstrance. If he were to give explanations
in our heated and confused state, we could not
appreciate them. We may think, perhaps, his
reducing us to silence is an arbitrary refusal to
enlighten us ; but we may possibly discover, after
we have been silent a while, that a better and
ampler explanation lies in the words, " Thou didst
it."

The most remarkable illustration of this is found

212 SILENT BEFORE GOD.

in the Book of Job. To appreciate it fully, we
need to study the entire book, and to follow its
wonderful development to its conclusion. Job
was confronted at once with the most terrible
affliction, and with the profoundest and most per-
plexing of moral problems. The two were inter-
twined: the problem grew out of the affliction,
and the affliction aggravated the problem. He
had been a just and God-fearing man. He had
been a prosperous man, and he never had thought
of questioning that his prosperity was the reward
of his piety. That was the doctrine of the cur-
rent theology, and he accepted it. Now his pros-
perity was swept away, his household desolated,
his person horribly tormented and disfigured: and
the logical outcome of his theology could only be,
that he was being smitten for sin, as he had been
rewarded for goodness ; and this his friends urged
with all the weight of their wisdom, and with,
much bitterness and unfairness. But Job would
not admit the conclusion of his own logic. Like
many another man who has all his life passively
accepted formulas, he found that his formulas
would not stretch to cover his case. He was con-
scious of his integrity, and he would not refuse
the testimony of that consciousness. He would
not admit that he was being punished for sin.
But then came in the other and greater difficulty :
"If not for sin, then why? If I have walked
justly before God, why does he smite me thus?
Is he a just God, who renders to men according to
their works ? If I have sinned, why does he not

SILENT BEFORE GOD. 213

show me my sin ? Why does he not at least ex-
plain his dealing with me, and vindicate his own
justice and love ? " This is the agony which
throbs and seethes through this wonderful poem,
— Job trying to understand God, groping in the
darkness of his misery for that presence which he
dimly feels is behind it all, but which he cannot
grasp, and from which he can draw not a word.
" Oh ! " he says, " if God would but speak, or let
me speak to him ! He is not a man as I am, whom
I might answer, that we should come together in
judgment. There is no arbiter between us, to lay
his hand on us both, who would remove his rod
from me, so that the dread of him should not
overawe me. If there were, I would speak, and
not fear him. I would address myself to the
Almighty. I crave to reason with God. Oh that
my words were written down ! that they were
inscribed in a book, with an iron pen and lead,
cut deep in the rock forever ! Oh that I knew
where I might find him ! I would press even to
his seat. I would set out my cause before him,
and fill my mouth with pleas."

And at last, after he has poured out his soul in
bitterness, after he has sinfully impeached God's
justice, has fiercely shaken his innocence in the
Almighty's face, and has driven his ill-judging
friends from the field with his indignant eloquence,
the heavens darken. Even while Elihu is speaking,
he sees the spreading of the clouds, and hears the
crash of the Almighty's pavilion. God clothes
his palms with lightning, and flings his flash across

214 SILENT BEFORE GOD.

the heavens ; and out of the midst of thunder and
wind and great rain comes at last the voice which
Job has been hungering to hear. The agony of
the great debate has reached its climax ; and, as
eagerly as Job, we wait to hear the words which
shall answer for us, as for him, the question why
Almighty love sends suffering upon the good, and
mystery to the honest inquirer. And what do we
get? Magnificent poetry, indeed, in those four
chapters,1 — splendid descriptions of God's wisdom
in nature, of his power in the sea, and his beauty
in the dawn, but not a word of explanation ; no
answer to the question which has been torturing
Job's heart, no unfolding of the how or why. So
far as that is concerned, God remains silent, and
Job must still be dumb. The only answer is, " I
did it. You must take me as the solution of the
mystery." "But that is no solution," cries one
impatiently. I am not so sure of that. Job found
it a solution. Job was a thinker, — a deeper thinker
than either of his friends. It was because he
thought so deeply, because he appreciated the
magnitude of these awful questions of Providence
and destiny, that his agony was so terrible. If he
could have plastered over these mysteries with cer-
tain well-worn sayings as deftly as Bildad and
Eliphaz and Zophar did, or as some comfortable
people do at this day, he could have borne his
bodily ailments better. But Job, out there on the
refuse-heap, found out what some of us find out in

1 Job xxxviii.-xli.

SILENT BEFORE GOD. 215

our familiar lines of institutionalism, that there are
some questions larger than the catechism, — some
questions which, when we try to cover them with
convenient formulas and familiar oracles, have an
awkward way of exposing bare corners : and yet
Job, thinker as he was, as anxious to know how
and why as any modern rationalist, did find a solu-
tion in God's answer. He found God, and that
satisfied him. When the whirlwind and the voice
are past, Job is another man : he is no longer the
protester. He is bowed humbly, penitently, ador-
ingly, contentedly, before his Maker.

Perhaps there is almost as great a mystery to us
in Job's satisfaction as in the process of his trial ;
and one reason why it is a mystery is, that we
cleave so obstinately to the position that satisfac-
tion and peace can come only through our knowing
why things are. There is a nearer point of rest ;
but we overlook it, and keep our eyes on the far-
off cloud behind which, as we think, lies explana-
tion and consequent satisfaction : and God denies
this fundamental position of ours. Firmly and
steadily he presses our attention towards the
nearer point, which at first seems less promising, —
that satisfaction lies in knowing God rather than
in knowing the reasons for God's dealings. The
compass-needle swings persistently round from the
reason why to "I did it," — from the philosophy
to the fact of Providence. Job's comfort came out
of the fact that he had found God. His friends
had been prating to him about God's character and
God's laws and God's methods ; and it had all gone

216 SILENT BEFORE GOD.

no deeper than his ear. " I had heard of thee,"
he says, " with the hearing of the ear, but now
mine eye seeth thee." Oh, what a difference
there is between knowing about God and knowing
God ! The reason why the philosophic spirit is so
restless, so querulous, so hard to satisfy, is not in
the extent of its knowledge, but in the shortness of
it. It ranges about God, contemplates God, studies
God from without ; but it does not penetrate to the
Father in heaven. God satisfied Job by revealing
himself. The sorely tortured man did not find ex-
planation, but he found something better. There
was a wealth of comfort and hope in the fact that
God spoke to him. This he had been craving:
now God speaks. He is not indifferent to him ;
he is not alienated from him ; he has not been
indifferently looking down upon the sufferer from
the far-off region of his divine splendor and per-
fect bliss. He has done this thing ; the suffering
is of his sending ; he is in the heart of the mys-
tery : and so it was with Job as with a frightened
child in the dark, conjuring up troops of phantoms,
shaken with nameless terrors, — when the mother's
voice calls out of the dark, " I am here," the
child sinks into quiet, not seeing the mother, not
knowing how her presence acts to dissipate the
terrors of the night, — knowing simply the precious,
all-sufficient fact, that mother is there in the dark.
" Well," it may be said, " all that may do very
well for a child ; but a reasoning man cannot be
disposed of in that way." All I can say is, many
a reasoning man has to accept that or nothing.

SILENT BEFORE GOD. 217

After all, it may be that the child's satisfaction has
something rational at bottom ; according to divine
reason at least, since the gospel tells us that this
great mystery of the kingdom of God, with its
hard questions, and its Cross and discipline and
tribulation, must be received as a little child if
received at all. Reason cannot compel God to
answer ; and, suppose it could, would man be the
better ? Would he understand any more if God
should tell him all he wants to know ? Can there
not be a better gift than knowledge ? Surely it is
not unreasonable to ask ; since it is clear enough,
that the men who know most are not always, nor
perhaps often, the happiest of men. Take a simple
illustration. There are certain reasons connected
with your child's education or inheritance which
constrain you to live for some years in an uncon-
genial and unpleasant place. Neither climate,
scenery, nor society is what you could desire. The
child asks, " We are not poor, are we, father ? "

— " No." — " Could we not live somewhere else ? "

— " Yes." — " Then, why do we stay here when
there are so many pleasant places elsewhere ? "
You cannot tell him ; he could not understand the
reasons ; but, for all that, the lesson that child
learns through your silence, through being obliged
to be content with the simple fact, father does it,
is more valuable than the knowledge of the rea-
sons. It is the lesson of confidence, of trust in
your love and in your wisdom, of unquestioning
obedience. Even if he should make a shrewd and
precocious guess at your reasons, that would not

218 SILENT BEFORE GOD.

please you half so much as his cheerful, unques-
tioning acceptance of the truth that you love hirn,
and will do what is best for him. That moral re-
lation between you is worth infinitely more than
any amount of intellectual sympathy. And the
very foundation of true character and success lies
in dependence on God. God cannot develop the
best possibilities of any soul until that soul is first
sure of him, — sure that what he does is right,
simply because he does it ; and that is why God
lays so much stress on that lesson. That is why
he so often brings his child face to face with the
bare " I did it," until he learns to find in it his
refuge and his comfort. That kind of teaching
may not make philosophers, — when it does, it
makes them of a large mould, — but it makes
Pauls and Luthers.

But this " thou didst it " has some treasures of
knowledge for us. Faith is not ignorance. Some
of you remember a story, by a once-popular Irish
poet, of a Greek youth who travelled to Egypt in
search of the secret of immortality. One night,
by the bank of the Nile, he found a little pyramid,
seemingly as solid as the rock itself, but, as he
examined it more closely, he found hints of a con-
cealed opening, and finally struck a spring, and a
door opened, which led him into a region of won-
ders. And even so, as we go round and round
this " thou didst it," which seems so bare and so
hard and so unpromising, which suggests at first
only relentless will and resistless power, it begins
to open : it conceals something, and we begin to

SILENT BEFORE GOD. 219

make discoveries. God did it. Well, then, I know
that infinite wisdom did it : these hard problems
of Providence, these mysteries of society and of
man, — I am not to conclude that they are untrans-
latable. There is a wisdom which understands the
maze, and holds the clew to it. This tangle of
society has a thread which passes up into God's
hand. If he chooses not to unravel it now, there
is a wise reason for it. If the tangle is here, it
does not follow that it does not clear itself higher
up. Perhaps this mystery has a power of training
for me. "If," says a recent writer, "proof were
possible ; if God could inspire, or man indite, an
argument which should once for all interpret our
life to us, solve all its problems, dispel all its mys-
tery, — it is still open to doubt whether it would
be well that we should have it ; for the mystery
which encompasses us on every side is an educa-
tional force of the highest value. With certainty,
we might be content, and we might rust in our
content ; but with mystery within us, and on
every side of us, compelling us to ask, What does
this mean, and that; and, above all, what does God
mean by it all? we lose the rest of content, to
gain a strife of thought which impels us onward
and upward, and for which, in the end, we shall all
be wiser and happier."

God did it. Then, I know that infinite power
did it. "Ah!" you say, "we know that but too
well. The stroke is on our hearts and homes. It
is written on fresh graves, and in the scar of dreary
partings." All true. But has power no other

220 SILENT BEFORE GOD.

aspect than this terrible one? Shall we symbolize
it only by a hand hurling thunderbolts? or may
we not picture a hand, strong indeed, but open,
and pouring forth blessings ? " All power is given
unto me," says Jesus. Yet he laid his hand on
blind eyes, and they saw; on the paralytic, and
he leaped and ran. The prophet saw these two
meanings in infinite power : " Let us return unto
the Lord ; for he hath torn, and he will heal us :
he hath smitten, and he will bind up and revive
us." Infinite power to destroy must imply infinite
power to heal. Power to let loose the flood must
be also power to say, " Thus far shalt thou go, and
no farther; and here shall thy proud waves be
stayed." And the power which turneth man to
destruction, and sayeth, " Return to dust, ye chil-
dren of men," is our dwelling-place in all genera-
tions, yea, to everlasting, — the power which can
stir the dead dust, and say to it, " Return to life ! "
which can make us glad, according to the days
wherein he has afflicted us, and the years wherein
we have seen evil.

God did it, and therefore I know that infinite
love did it. That is a piece of knowledge worth
having indeed. Surely, when we reach that, we
find the rock yielding water. Ah ! we have to
creep back for rest into the shadow of love, after
all. There is a solution of mystery and sorrow
which is not by logic. Just what it is, just how it
is, you and I can no more tell than we could tell
how a child is comforted, even before it has told
its sorrow, by the mere pressure of its mother's

SILENT BEFORE GOD. 221

arms. Moses knew when lie said, " The eternal
God is thy refuge, and underneath are the ever-
lasting arms." Logic ! How grimly these mighty
mysteries smile at logic ! Men start with the facts
and conditions of their earthly existence, with the
things which they see and know, and draw their
straight, logical lines, and think they keep on, in
undeviating course, straight up to the region of
the divine counsels ; and they seem to forget, that,
just as a starbeam is turned from its direct line
by passing into another atmosphere, so the line
of their human logic may be strangely refracted
when it passes out of the denser atmosphere of
man's thought into the high, clear region of the
divine thought. No : the way to God is not the
logician's way. No man ever reasoned himself to
God ; no man ever reasoned himself into submis-
sion under God's strokes, or into restfulness amid
his mysteries. The child's way is the only way, —
going direct to him who did it, and resting in
silence, if need be, on his divine heart.

And how this truth gathers power when we go
to this text, taking Christ with us ! How it kin-
dles under his touch ! God did it ; and I look up
into that face of unspeakable love, with its thorn-
marked brow, and say, " Thou didst it. He that
hath seen thee hath seen the Father. I am in
sorrow; the sorrow is driven home by a pierced
hand : thou didst it. I am in darkness : the key
to the mystery is in the same hand. The hand is
closed; it will not surrender the key: but thou
didst it; and, if I may only hold that hand, no

222 SILENT BEFORE GOD.

matter for the key. The pierced hand tells me of
the loving heart behind the hand; and, if love
hath done it, let me be silent and content.

My brethren, there is not one of us who is not
confronted with hard questions in his thought,
and with painful mysteries of Providence in his
life. These things have a meaning, believe it.
Ultimately that meaning may be knowledge ,
but, before knowledge, their meaning is character.
Here on earth their first meaning is not knowl-
edge. That is evident enough from the way in
which they baffle our inquiries, and refuse to
give up their interpretation to our intellects ; but
the moment we approach them from the side of
love and trust and obedience, they open their
lips. God's Tightness is our first object of search ;
and not with the intellect, but with the heart,
man believeth unto righteousness. God's adminis-
tration stimulates inquiry. God's dispensations,
which break our hearts, will set us questioning.
We must question. We shall never cease ques-
tioning. God never meant that we should. But
you know how, when astronomers erect an observ-
atory, the first thing is to lay a foundation for the
great telescope. Deep down in the earth they
ground the massive piers ; so deep that no jar of
passing wheels shall cause the delicately poised
instrument to vary a hair's breadth. Let us sweep
the horizon of divine truth : let us bring to bear
the most powerful lenses which learning and phi-
losophy can prepare ; but, first of all, let us have
a solid foundation for our telescope. Our intel-

SILENT BEFORE GOD. 223

lects will work more calmly, more discriminatingly,
to far better purpose, when our hearts are at rest
in God.

Over the arched gate of the Alhambra at Gra-
nada, there is sculptured an open hand ; and over
the arch just beyond, a key. It is said that the
haughty and luxurious Moors, who held that pal-
ace-fort for so many years, were wont to boast that
the gate never would be opened to the Christians
until the hand should take the key. Many a Prov-
idence, like this fortress, contains within its rough
walls and frowning battlements fountains of living
water ; but none the less the gate is shut, and the
grim bastions give no hint of shelter or rest. How
many of you have been forced to stand silent before
one of God's heart-breaking mysteries, and to con-
tent yourselves for the time with the simple " Thou
didst it " ! But, O my friend ! stand still a little
longer, not in wrath, nor in despair. By and by
the hand will take the key, — the hand " which
openeth, and no man shutteth." The gate shall
open into the heart of the Providence ; and, behind
the stern "thou didst it," shall stand revealed
eternal love and eternal peace.

XIII.

A LEPEE'S LOGIC.

XIII.

A LEPER'S LOGIC.

" And it came to pass, while he was in one of the cities, behold,
a man full of leprosy : and when he saw Jesus, he fell on his face,
and besought him, saying, Lord, if thou wilt, thou canst make
me clean. And he stretched forth his hand, and touched him,
saying, I will ; he thou made clean. And straightway the leprosy
departed from him." — Luke v. 12, 13.

THIS man apparently had no doubt of our
Lord's ability to heal him: " Thou canst make
me clean." It was about Christ's willingness to
heal him that he was in doubt : " If thou ivilt, thou
canst." His coming to Jesus was an act of faith,
but of incomplete faith, — a faith which, having
grasped the truth of divine saving power, failed
to grasp the collateral truth of divine saving love.
As in so many other cases, we have to deal here,
not only with a single incident, but with a repre-
sentative case and a general principle. The prin-
ciple is, that true faith grasps alike the power and
the good-will of God. The truth is laid down in
the words of the writer to the Hebrews, on the
nature of faith: "He that cometh to God must
believe that he is, and that he is a rewarder of
them that seek after him." The leper's imperfect

227

228 A LEPER'S LOGIC.

faith represents that of thousands at the present
day, who, without any doubt of God's ability to
help them, are not convinced of his disposition
to help them.

Setting aside for the present the special causes
of this doubt in the leper's case, we see, that, as
a rule, men do not naturally associate love and
power, and that they believe in the existence of
power far more readily than in that of love. They
know little about the nature or the secret of
power, yet there are multitudes who admire and
trust it all the more for the very mystery which
envelops it. The annals of popular delusions are
full of illustrations of this. And such people
exaggerate power. Your little child, for instance,
places no limit to your power. He will ask you
to do an impossible thing just as readily as he
will ask you for a sugar-plum or a picture-book.
It does not enter his mind that there is any thing
his father cannot do. It is the same with the
masses of men. They are little more than chil-
dren in the hands of their leaders. They ascribe
to them more power than they have. This leper
was an illustration of the same fact : he knew lit-
tle or nothing of the divine nature of Jesus ; he
did not know that all power was given to him in
heaven and on earth ; he had probably heard of
some wonderful things that Jesus had done, and
hence he leaped to the conclusion, rightly as it
happened, but none the less irrationally, that Jesus
could take away this most terrible of all afflictions
if he would.

mam

A LEPER'S LOGIC. 229

On the other hand, there is no such tendency to
exaggerate love. That child, — to go back to the
illustration, — familiar with love, brought up in its
very atmosphere, compassed about with its tender
ministrations, — that child, who believes in his
father's power to perform the impossible, is scepti-
cal about his father's disposition to pardon his fault,
and will hide himself when he hears his father's
step, and knows that his breaking of the vase or
his upsetting of the inkstand will be found out.

Power, somehow, seems to create distrust hi
love. Perhaps it is because the world is so used*
to seeing power used arbitrarily and selfishly that
power seems practically to exclude love. The
natural instinct of mankind associates power with
its deities. That is, perhaps, the fundamental idea
in the natural conception of Deity. The African
who bows down before his horrible fetich is
moved to that act by the belief that it has a
strange and terrible power over his life, and his
success in war or in hunting; but the familiar
Pagan mythologies show us that the gods were
expected to use their power in the interest of their
passions and caprices, and not, habitually at least,
for the good of their worshippers. It was to be
expected that a Jove would hurl blighting thun-
derbolts, or assume human or other form to work
mischief and sorrow in the homes of men ; that a
Mercury should outwit men with his divine cun-
ning : it was not to be expected that all this super-
human power and wit should be concentrated upon
human welfare.

230 A LEPER'S LOGIC.

Now, it is this very error which the God of the
Bible, through all his administration, has been at
work to overcome, and to put in its place, and to
get lodged firmly in men's hearts, the conviction
that God loves them, and "is more willing to give
good things to them that ask him than earthly
parents are to give good gifts unto their children ; "
that God, in other words, literally puts himself at
the service of those who love him. But this lesson
has to make its way slowly against the natural
incredulity of which we have spoken. If the ques-
tion were merely of divine power, there would be
much more bold coming to the throne of the heav-
enly grace to obtain mercy and help in time of
need. To all of us, God and power have long since
become convertible terms. We all say, instinctive-
ly, when our needs, our sorrows, our sins oppress
us, " Thou canst." But we are often held back
from the throne of power by that little but mighty
" if?" — " If thou wilt." Christ came to break the
hold of that " if," and to fill the souls of those who
seek him with the conviction, so well voiced in the
old hymn we used to hear so often, —

" This, this, is the God we adore, —
Our faithful, unchangeable Friend,
Whose love is as great as his power,
And neither knows measure nor end."

Another reason why men are so slow to associate
love and willingness with power in their thought
of God, lies in the consciousness of sin : and hence,
strange as it may seem, this reluctance to believe
in God's love develops along with right concep-

A LEPER'S LOGIC. 231

tions of God as a God of holiness ; for the appre-
ciation of God's infinite holiness by man reveals
man's own imperfection, tends to make him out of
heart with self, and to fill him with self-contempt.
When Peter, as the story is told in the verses just
preceding this incident, saw the divine power of
Christ displayed in the miraculous filling of the
net with fish, the first result was not to draw him
to Christ, but, on the contrary, to make him say,
" Depart from me ; for I am a sinful man, O Lord."
And, in the light of this fact, the incident of
our text has a peculiar force ; for the disease from
which this man was suffering was not regarded as
the most fearful of hodily ills only. As you study
the Levitical code, you find that provisions respect-
ing leprosy are more than mere sanitary regula-
tions. They give to this horrible disease a moral
and typical meaning, as a representative of sin.
It was a decomposition of the vital juices, putre-
faction in a living body ; and hence an image of
death, introducing the same dissolution and de-
struction of life into the bodily sphere which sin
introduced into the spiritual. The leper was
treated throughout as a sinner. " He was," as has
been remarked, " a dreadful parable of death."
He bore the emblems of death, — the rent gar-
ments, the bare head, the covered lip ; and in his
restoration the same instruments and symbols were
used as for the cleansing of one defiled by a dead
body, and which were never used on any other
occasion, — cedar-wood, with its well-known anti-
septic qualities, a symbol of the continuance of

232 A LEPER'S LOGIC.

life ; scarlet, a symbol of freshness of life ; hyssop,
a symbol of purification from the corruption of
death. Hence you can understand why the Psalm-
ist, in his prayer for pardon, says, "Purge me
with hyssop, and I shall be clean." Moreover,
this disease, like sin, was incurable by human
skill, and entailed upon the sufferer the penalty
of exclusion from the commonwealth of Israel,
even as it is said of the holy city of John's vision,
" There entereth nothing that defileth."

The case of this leper, therefore, gave our Lord
an opportunity not only to do a work of mercy
and love upon a diseased man, but also to give a
symbolic testimony of his willingness to deal lov-
ingly and forgivingly with a sinful man. Quite
possibly one thing which led the leper to doubt
Christ's willingness to heal him, was the peculiarly
horrible and fatal character of his disease. Christ,
as he had probably heard, had healed other mala-
dies, but he had not heard of his healing leprosy ;
and was it possible that this thing, so terrible that
it cut him off from the society of his people, and
caused him to be held and treated as a dead man,
— was it possible that Christ would be willing to
deal with this as he had with other and milder
forms of disease ?

And, in showing that he was willing as well as
able, Christ, I repeat, told the world, that as he
was not repelled from the worst form of bodily
evil, so he was not repelled from that of which
this disease was the type. His word, " I will," his
touch upon the leper, said to those who were

A LEPER'S LOGIC. 233

watching him, and to all who should henceforth
read the story, " Nothing stands in the way of my
good-will towards those who seek me. No taint,
bodily or spiritual, holds back my love or my
power from one who needs and wants me. Him
who wants me, I want. He who is willing will
find me willing. Him that cometh to me, I will in
no wise cast out. There is no if about my willing-
ness any more than about my power."

Here, then, we see Christ's willingness tested
and vindicated by the very worst case which could
appeal to it. If his willingness did not stop at
leprosy, it would stop at no form of bodily evil ;
and we need this lesson every whit as much as
the men of that time did. The only Christ for
us is the Christ who is willing to deal lovingly
with our worst. And here the doubt comes in.
To repeat what I have already said, as men ac-
quire true conceptions of God, they get appalling
and disheartening views of themselves. Like the
Psalmist, they remember God, and are troubled ;
and this is all as it should be : only the true mean-
ing of this terrible revelation of self is not to
make them afraid of God, but only afraid of sin,
— not to make them flee from God, but to bring
them to him. And it is hard to convince men of
this meaning, hard to make them believe, when
they once fairly apprehend the evil in their own
hearts, that that is just what God is aiming at;
that that is just what he is anxious to cleanse
them from ; that that very evil furnishes the bes?
of all reasons why they should go to him instead

234 A LEPER'S LOGIC.

of keeping away from him , that the very vileness
which they deplore is the very thing on which the
love and power of God are eager to fasten. Hence
you often hear a penitent saying, uIs it possible
that God is willing to receive one so deeply stained
as I am ? He receives sinners, it is said ; but will
he receive so great a sinner as I am ? "

And the same thing is manifest in the Christian
struggle after conversion. The Christian struggle,
I say. No one need tell me that that seventh
chapter of Romans describes the experience of an
unconverted man, or at least of such an one only.
Hear the apostle: "To will is present with me,
but to do that which is good is not. The good
which I would, I do not : the evil which I would
not, that I practise. I delight in the law of God
after the inward man : but I see a different law in
my members, warring against the law of my mind,
and bringing me into captivity under the law of
sin which is in my members. O wretched man
that I am ! who shall deliver me out of the body
of this death?" I know nothing of Christian
experience if just such a conflict as that is not in
active progress in you and me ; if you and I can-
not say with the French king, "Ah, those two
men ! I know them well ; " if you and I are not
distinctly conscious of two forces wrestling with-
in us, the one of which makes for holiness and
self-denial and meekness, while the other pushes
desperately for pride and self-will and pleasure.
And we cry out, like the apostle, "Who shall
deliver us?" Is it indeed the will of God that

A LEPER'S LOGIC. 235

we shall get the strong man armed out of our
house? Is it not too great a thing to hope for,
that this sin, which dogs our steps, and breaks our
peace, and fights every good aspiration, and mines
away under every good resolution, shall be gotten
under our feet ? My friend, Christ is willing. That
is just what he is aiming at, — that worst which
is in us. Paul answers the "Who shall deliver
me?" with "I thank God through Jesus Christ
our Lord. Sin shall not have dominion over you."
And now let us see how Christ's willingness
comes out in the incident of our text. And, in
the first place, you observe that Ms willingness
is not repelled by an imperfect faith. This leper
believed only in Christ's power: he did not be-
lieve in his willingness ; he only wished or hoped
he might be willing. Christ did not turn him away
for that : he did not make him wait until his faith
was better developed. It was a good deal for him
to have come as far as to believe in Christ's power.
That was farther than the possessed boy's father,
at the foot of the transfiguration mount, had come.
He was in doubt about Christ's power. He had
tried the disciples, and they could not cast out
the devil ; and so he turns to Jesus, saying doubt-
fully, " If thou canst do any thing, have compas-
sion on us." Christ did not say to him, " Go away
until you can believe that I have the power." He
seized on the possibility which the man's mind had
admitted, and sought to develop it into faith. " If
thou canst," say you ? " All things can be to him
that believeth." And the man made a great step

236 A LEPER'S LOGIC.

forward when he cried out, " Lord, I believe ; help
thou mine unbelief." Thomas, the Lord's own
disciple, was worse than either of these two. He
wanted sensible evidence of his Lord's identity,
and insisted on it in a most unreasonable and dis-
agreeable way, at which Christ might have been
justly offended ; but Christ was willing to give him
even that, if he could only be brought to believe.
You find illustrations of the same truth in the
Old Testament; showing how God, instead of
being offended by incomplete faith, seizes upon
such as there is, and brings every possible appli-
ance to bear, in order to strengthen it. Even
Abraham, the Old-Testament type of faith, asked
for a sign ; and Gideon asked for a second sign
after God had given him one, and received it,
with a third one in addition. God's willingness
is shown pre-eminently in the means which he uses
to strengthen faith, so that it may lay firm hold
on his love and power. Because, after all, this
willingness has a law and a limitation. It is not
the reckless, undiscriminating kindness of a foolish
father, who gives unconditionally whatever his son
asks. God is willing to give us far more than we
can ask, or are worthy to receive ; but then he
makes faith the indispensable condition of his gifts :
" Without faith it is impossible to be well-pleasing
unto him: for he that cometh to God must believe
that he is, and that he is a rewarder of those that
seek him." Hence, I repeat, God's willingness is
shown first of all in encouraging men to believe in
his willingness.

A LEPER'S LOGIC. 237

I cannot help thinking that Christ knew of the
approach of this poor leper before the multitude
did. The man ran a great risk in coming into that
company, the more so as his condition was evident
to every one. The disease was at an advanced
stage. Luke the physician, whose eye was quick
to note such facts, tells us that he was full of
leprosy ; and yet his incomplete faith had power
enough to nerve him to make the attempt to get
to Jesus. I think the gracious Lord must have
known that, and must have furthered his effort
in some way of his own ; for that was a case after
Christ's own heart. His compassion made him
willing to heal the man's body, but his compas-
sion went deeper than his body. He would fain
heal his soul as well; and, in order to that, he
must develop in him that faith without which
there is no salvation. It was much that he be-
lieved in Jesus' power. He must be taught also
to believe in his love. The case of the woman
who pressed through the crowd, and touched the
hem of his garment, resembled this in some points.
She believed in Christ's power so fully as to believe
that it extended to his clothing; yet, like this
leper, she seems to have had some doubt about his
willingness. She would make the experiment by
stealth. She did not count on Christ's knowing
that power had gone forth from him ; and she was
confused and frightened when found out, as one
who had stolen something , but she received that
day something of greater value than healing. She
learned Christ's heart toward the afflicted. She

238 A LEPER'S LOGIC.

never again would steal to him, trembling and
afraid, after hearing him say, " Thy faith hath
made thee whole. Go in peace."

Christ's willingness was shown, further, in his
express declaration. How striking is the way in
which he meets that timid " If thou wilt " with
" I will " ! The man's only doubt was relieved at
once ; and not only by Christ's clear, ringing
words, but by his extraordinary act in touching
him. The leper knew very well, and the whole
multitude knew, that to touch a leper was forbid-
den by the law ; that a man contracted thereby a
pollution as from contact with the dead. But here
is a willing helper indeed, who, in his desire to
save me, will break through the ceremonial law,
and lay himself open to the inconvenience and the
odium of ceremonial pollution. And let it be
observed here, that nothing shows the good-will
of Christ, his real, deep desire to save and help
men, more than his readiness to come into contact
with them. It is well for us to look at that fact
from the stand-point of our modern habits and
tastes. Neatness, cleanliness, order, the conceal-
ment of every thing offensive, — these are not
merely attributes of luxurious living, they are
cardinal principles, first instincts of ordinary liv-
ing and of common decency ; and it certainly is
not open to question, that an exquisitely toned
and susceptible nature, like that of our Lord, felt
the full power of these instincts. And yet no one
knew better than our Lord the power of those very
instincts to separate the coarse and ignorant and

A LEPERS LOGIC. 239

diseased masses from the cultured and decent who
should be their helpers. He knew very well how
readily the poor and unclean man caught the im-
pression that the cleanly, well-dressed man despised
him, and wanted to avoid him. And the Saviour
would never give room for that impression for a
moment. Whatever curses the ignorant Jew might
vent upon him, he never could say that he avoided
him because of his poverty or his uncleanness. He
never shrank from the contact of the filthy rabble
which pressed round him, thrusting upon his atten-
tion their deformities and hideous marks of disease ;
and Christ's contact with such, Christ's hand laid
upon the leper and upon the paralytic and upon
the squalid children which poor mothers brought
to receive his blessing, has been well-nigh as po-
tent a sermon to the world as the Sermon on the
Mount.

And the fact takes on new meaning as a type
of Christ's attitude toward moral pollution. As
society is constituted, our contact with men is
regulated very much by outward decencies. We
cannot read each other's hearts ; and, moreover, we
ourselves are simply imperfect men among imper-
fect men. But here was the purest moral nature
in earth or heaven, one who knew the whole mean-
ing and vileness of sin, one to whom the shadow
of evil was horrible ; and yet the story of his life
is summed up in this, that he laid that pure nature
right against the world's polluted heart; that
he threw himself into the midst of a society, of
which the most outwardly decent part was the

240 A LEPER'S LOGIC.

most deceitful and corrupt, and touched that moral
pollution as really as his hand touched the leper,
in order to redeem and save it. This, I say, is the
story of Christ's life, the expressive comment on
his " I will " uttered to the leper, — " The Son of
man is come to seek and to save that which was
lost."

And if you will go back to the old Mosaic law,
and study the directions for the purification of a
leper, as you will find them in the fourteenth of
Leviticus, you will see what a beautiful figure
they furnish of the provision made by divine love
for the purification of a sinful nature. When the
priest, on examination, had found the leprosy
cured and gone, the patient was bidden to bring
two birds. One of these the priest killed over an
earthen vessel containing fresh spring-water, so
that its blood should mingle with the water ; then,
taking the other bird, with the cedar (the sign of
preservation from corruption), the scarlet (the sign
of fresh life), and the hyssop (the sign of purifica-
tion), he dipped them, with the bird, into the min-
gled blood and water, and then let the bird fly
away. The letting loose of the bird was a symbol
that the former leper was imbued with new vital
energy, and released from the fetters of his dis-
ease, and was now free to go where he would.
The slain bird showed that the leper would have
suffered death on account of his uncleanness but
for the restoring mercy of God. As we look up
from this strange rite in the wilderness in the
shadow of the tabernacle, our eyes rest on Jesus

A LEPER'S LOGIC. 241

and the sinner. Tainted with the leprosy of sin,
he must die bnt for the exercise of sovereign
mercy, — must die, not from any arbitrary decree,
but from the essential nature of sin, which poisons
the fountains of life. That mercy is exercised
through the shedding of blood: "Without shed-
ding of blood is no remission;" and, as we look
upon the bleeding fowl and the stream of its life
mingling with the pure water, we turn to the cross,
and see Him who came by water and blood, even
Jesus Christ, "not with the water only, but with
the water and the blood," which we see flowing
together from His pierced side. As the symbols
of preservation, fresh life, purification, are dipped
into the blood ; so, as we look at the restored sin-
ner, we see insured to him eternal life, purity, and
vigorous power for ministry, through the touch of
that blood upon his soul : and, as we mark the
bird flying freely and gladly away toward its famil-
iar haunts and companions ; so, through the blood
of Christ, we see the sinner set free from bondage,
called unto the liberty of the children of God,
made free of the privileges and the companion-
ship of the household of Christ. This is what
Christ's " I will " means. It means a willingness
which takes in his descent from the glory of the
Father ; his taking upon himself the form of ser-
vant ; his being made in the likeness of sinful
flesh. The " I will " speaks from Simon's ban-
queting-hall, where the sinner meets his tender
forgiveness and recognition of her act of love ;
from Bethany, as Lazarus steps forth from the

242 A LEPER'S LOGIC.

grave ; from the shores of the lake, where the ra-
ging demon departs at His word, and leaves the
victim at Jesus' feet, clothed, and in his right
mind ; from under the olives of Gethsemane, and
down from the cross in the gathering darkness, —
from these, and from every sinful, penitent soul
saved, during all these centuries, through faith in
his blood, come the echo of that gracious word to
the leper, " I will."

In our approaches to God, we must clearly rec-
ognize the truth, that God has a will to bless us.
The soul that cannot be convinced of God's good-
will by his gift of Jesus Christ, cannot be con-
vinced at all. When God had given the world
Christ, he had nothing better to give it; for, in
giving Christ, he had given himself: and hence
the apostle well says, " He that spared not his
own Son, but delivered him up for us all, how shall
he not with him also freely give us all things ? "
If that is true, if we have indeed a Father who
is more willing to give good things to them that
ask him than earthly parents are to give good
gifts unto their children, — why should we not
come near with confidence ? Why should not our
lives be more richly dowered with spiritual gifts
than they are? There may be one within the
sound of my voice to-day, penitent for sin, with a
contrite, broken heart, desiring to find Christ's
rest, yet so burdened with a sense of guilt and
unworthiness as to doubt Christ's willingness to
receive him. Doubt no longer, my friend, as you
hear this word from the Saviour himself : "I will :

A LEPER'S LOGIC 243

come, and be cleansed." There may be one almost
discouraged with the fierceness and pertinacity of
the conflict with inbred sin, tempted to give up
the fight, asking, " Shall I ever gain the victory ? "
Hear Christ this morning: "I will." He wills
that you shall conquer. God's good-will is on
your side ; and, if God be for you, who shall be
against you ? What excuse can we possibly have
for cherishing unwilling hearts in ourselves in the
face of such willingness on Christ's part ? Depend
upon it, if we are cold-hearted, bound down by sin,
inefficient, worldly-minded, without power against
temptation, it is not Christ's fault. He does not
will to have it so. It is our fault that we do
not encourage by prayer that faith which he has
willed shall overcome the world. Depend upon
it, if we live below our privilege, and are content
with scanty spiritual gifts and attainments, it is
because we have not grasped the riches of mean-
ing in his " I will." You remember what Paul's
conception of the will of God toward believers
was, — a conception which he evidently thought was
no vain dream, since he distinctly asked that it
might become a fact in their lives : " For this
cause I bow my knees unto the Father, from
whom every family in heaven and on earth is
named, that he would grant you, according to the
riches of his glory, that ye may be strengthened
with power through his Spirit in the inward man ;
that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith ;
to the end that ye, being rooted and grounded in
love, may be strong to apprehend with all the

244 A LEPER'S LOGIC.

saints what is the breadth and length and height
and depth, and to know the love of Christ which
passeth knowledge, that ye may be rilled unto all
the fulness of God."

XIV.
PRAYER AND PANOPLY.

XIV.
PRAYER AND PANOPLY.

" With all prayer and supplication praying at all seasons in
the Spirit, and watching thereunto in all perseverance and sup-
plication for all the saints, and on my behalf, that utterance may
be given unto me in opening my mouth, to make known with
boldness the mystery of the gospel, for which I am an am-
bassador in chains; that in it I may speak boldly, as I ought
to speak." —Eph. vi. 18, 20.

THE whole of the latter part of this chapter,
from the tenth to the twenty-first verse, turns
on the fact of Christian conflict. This is a fact
about which Paul has a good deal to say in differ-
ent parts of his writings, and on which, evidently,
he feels very strongly. Christians have a battle
to fight, an enemy to overcome. The enemy is so
strong and wily that no human power can re-
sist him. The Christian must be clad in God's
armor. Moreover, he must be armed at every
point. Nothing less than the whole armor of God
will avail. Not only so, the armor itself is valuable
only as it is entire. It is of little consequence
where the soldier is struck, if only he falls.
Though his helmet may save him from a wound in
the head, the enemy's purpose is gained if, in the
absence of the breastplate, he can pierce his heart.

247

248 PRAYER AND PANOPLY.

Christ's purpose includes more than the develop-
ment or conservation of a single virtue in man.
It contemplates the salvation of the whole man.
God desires and means, not only to keep intact a
Christian's faith or hope or zeal, but his life, —
the Christian himself ; and a successful blow at
either of these is a blow at that life. Moreover,
the Christian qualities figured in this picture of
complete armor can exist and thrive only in com-
pany. Hope is nothing without faith ; readiness
is nothing without hope ; righteousness is of faith
only, and is nothing without truth ; while truth
finds its highest expression in righteousness. Then,
as the soldier, however well protected, is useless
without his sword ; so Christian hope and truth and
faith and righteousness get their highest sanction,
and are taught their appropriate uses, by the word
of God alone, — the sword of the Spirit. The
word of God and the armor of God are as neces-
sary to each other as the captain's orders are to
the armed soldier ; in short, this passage of Holy
Scripture will be of little use to us unless we study
it entire, and possess ourselves of the unity of all
the parts.

Consequently, we cannot understand these
words of our text about prayer unless we see how
they are related to what goes before. Prayer is
the divinely ordained means of intercourse with
God. In all that precedes, we get no intimation
of the personal contact of the Christian warrior
with his divine Leader. This is given us in prayer.
We have the word of God to the soldier ; but in

PRAYER AND PANOPLY. 249

prayer we have the soldier's word with God, the
contact and communion of soldier and general ;
and it is not without a purpose that the word of
God and prayer are brought together here. The
word of God gathers up into itself, expounds and
interprets Christian truth, hope, faith, righteous-
ness, readiness : but the word of God becomes a
living power, something to strike and to slay with,
only through the living contact of the Christian
with Christ ; and this contact is afforded by prayer
only. The word of God is to be to us, not simply
an object, but an instrument. It represents the
aggressive side of our Christian life. The world
and Satan are to be not merely resisted : they are
to be overcome. The gospel is to be not only de-
fended and vindicated : it is to be pressed upon
men's acceptance. The truth of its principles
must be vindicated, but the principles themselves
must likewise be made forces in society. As Chris-
tians, you and I live to impress. Our Christian
character is not merely something to be kept in-
tact : it must also prevail with men, and bring
them over into allegiance to the kingdom of God.
Hence, it is not enough that we study the word of
God, however critically ; it is not enough that we
hold it in our memory ; it is not enough that we
are kindled by its poetry, or convinced by its logic.
It must pass into our life, be hidden in our heart,
shape our character, and inspire our influence ;
and this no mere word will do. Nothing but life
can impart life : nothing but character can mould
character. The Bible is chiefly valuable to us as

250 PRAYER AND PANOPLY.

it expresses to us the personal character of God.
The Bible leads us to God ; but God must take us
by the hand, and lead us back through the Bible,
before we can gather the best out of it. It is
prayer that puts our hand in God's. Those dis-
ciples whom the risen Christ met on the road to
Emmaus had read the old prophecies scores of
times ; but they had never seen in them what came
out under the talk of that stranger who made
their hearts burn as he opened unto them the
Scriptures. They knew why it was, when they
found out who had been talking with them. And
one of the strongest proofs of the need of prayer
in the study of the Word is the fact, that so much
of the Bible is convertible into prayer. How many
of the Psalms, for instance, are prayers of them-
selves ! How many of them you could make, with
hardly a change, the forms of your communion with
God ! Indeed, the best Bible-reading is prayer, in
the sense of living contact and communion of the
soul with God.

Now, in our text, the apostle describes some of
the laws and characteristics of prayer ; and these
we will touch upon in the order in which he places
them.

First, then, we have a suggestion of the variety
of prayer. All prayer is the same in essence ;
but it takes on different modes, just as your inter-
course with a friend does. One day you will sit
down for a long conversation; another day you
will simply exchange a word as you pass each
other in the street; again, you call at his office

PRAYER AND PANOPLY. 251

on a matter of business, and the thing is settled
in a few brief, pointed sentences. So with prayer.
It is not all asking. Sometimes it is only inter-
change, without any petition at all, — talking to
God for the pleasure of communion. Sometimes
it is a sharp, short cry for help, like Peter's " Lord,
save me ! " when he felt himself sinking. Some-
times it is merely the aspiration of the heart to
God without a word, sometimes a half-conscious
sympathy of thought with God, sometimes a for-
mal public petition, sometimes a struggle to climb
over self to God. We are to pray with every prayer,
with all kinds of prayer. He is not always the
most prayerful man who prays most regularly or
most formally or most publicly. Sometimes more
prayer is condensed into a sentence than is to be
found in a whole series of prayer-meetings. I
never can read, without emotion the story of the
good old German professor who sat studying until
far into the night, and then, pushing his books
wearily aside, was heard by the occupant of the
next room to say, ere he lay down to rest, " Lord
Jesus, we are upon the same old terms."

This truth is brought out more clearly in the
next sentence, which suggests the seasonableness
of prayer, — " praying in every season" or on every
occasion. Some persons have been troubled by
the familiar version, "praying always" and have
asked very plausibly how it is possible for one to
be always praying, if he is to do any thing else
successfully. There would be no real difficulty,
even if this rendering were correct. Paul bids

252 PRAYER AND PANOPLY.

the Thessalonians " pray without ceasing," which
is even stronger. The difficulty disappears when
we take a broader view of prayer as including the
habitual contact of the life with God everywhere.
But our text adds, to the hint of varieties of pray-
er, that of occasions, which call out these varieties.
Leisure gives opportunity for deliberate, medita-
tive communion ; public worship, for formal suppli-
cation, confession, and thanksgiving; dangerous
emergencies, for sharp, short cries to God. A
stately liturgical formula would have been of lit-
tle use to Moses at the Red Sea, or to the Syro-
phenician woman pleading with Christ for her
stricken daughter. Every phase of a prayerful
man's life suggests an occasion for prayer; and
prayer has varieties enough for every occasion.
Take the single fact of temptation, out of which
this discourse of the apostle grows, and how many
occasions for prayer it furnishes ! If Satan tempts
in a variety of ways, he must be met with a variety
of prayers. The apostle's point, in short, is that
life is full of occasions and suggestions of contact
with God, and that a Christian is to avail himself
of these. Keep that thought of contact with God
in mind as the key to the passage. Prayer puts
you in contact. The moment that contact ceases,
you are in danger and helpless. You have Christ's
word for it : " Apart from me ye can do nothing."
You want God everywhere ; you want his counsel
in every thing ; your joy is incomplete, yea, empty,
without his sanction and sympathy ; your sorrow
is unbearable without his comfort ; your business

PRAYER AND PANOPLY. 253

lacks its one great element of success if God is left
out of it ; you will as surely fall under temptation
as you are human if God does not help you. Pray,
therefore, with every kind of prayer, at every
season.

We find next in order a statement of the ele-
ment and atmosphere of prayer, — " in the spirit."
You know that a great deal of the effectiveness
and general quality of work depends upon the
element in which it is done. One cannot work
equally well under all circumstances. There are
certain conditions of the atmosphere, for instance,
which seem to paralyze your brain : there are cer-
tain close, hot, drizzling days when all your work
is up-hill. There are certain people whose very
presence freezes you, and makes you question
whether you have an average amount of brains or
of feeling. What we are, comes very largely out
of our surroundings ; just as a taper gets much of
the material for combustion out of the atmosphere.
A light goes out in a vacuum. A swan cannot do
his best in the air, nor an eagle in the water. So
the power of prayer depends largely on the element
in which it works. A man who thinks he has
learned to pray when he has learned the forms of
prayer, is greatly mistaken. The disciples learned
very little when they heard the Lord's Prayer from
the Lord's own lips. They had indeed a lesson-
book in that prayer, and the lessons were deep as
God's own heart; but those men, at that stage of
their religious training, could not know what it
meant to pray, " Hallowed be thy name ; thy king-

254 PRAYER AND PANOPLY.

dom come ; thy will be done." The hymn says,
Christians

"Learn to pray when first they live."

So they do, but as a child learns the alphabet. We
have to be trained in prayer as in every other
department of Christian experience ; and one im-
portant factor of this training is, to know in what
element prayer will or will not work and prevail.
The apostle tells us, that the only effective prayer
is prayer in the spirit : and by this he does not
mean prayer when one feels like praying, or, as we
popularly say, " is in the spirit of praying ; " nor
does he mean when one prays spiritedly, with
enthusiasm and fervor ; but he means prayer under
the impulse and direction of the Spirit of God. You
remember that Paul, in that wonderful eighth
chapter of Romans, tells us that we have a natural
infirmity in prayer ; that we know not how to pray
as we ought ; and that only the Spirit of God can
help this infirmity, and teach us to pray. No won-
der, then, that he says in our text, that it is not
enough for us to use the varieties and occasions of
prayer, but that we must also get into the element
of prayer, and pray in the spirit. Otherwise, prayer
is only an evidence of infirmity, like the dim burn-
ing of a candle in foul air. Let us see briefly what
the Holy Spirit does for prayer.

First, it creates a prayerful heart. True prayer
is the communion of a child with a father ; and
this Holy Spirit is called the Spirit of Adoption,
whereby we cry " Father." That is, the Holy

PRAYER AND PANOPLY. 255

Spirit creates a son's heart in us : " The Spirit
himself beareth witness unto our spirit, that we are
the children of God : heirs of God, and joint-heirs
with Christ." That is the first thing. We never
can truly pray at all until we can pray " Our
Father ! " You see that we need the Spirit's aid,
in order to utter the very first words of the Lord's
prayer.

Then, further, the Spirit suggests the substance
of our prayers : " We know not what we should
pray for." The Spirit searches our hearts, and lays
bare their needs ; and these needs in turn drive us
to the mercy-seat.

Again, the spirit reveals the love and helpful-
ness of God, and so encourages us to present
these many and deep needs to him. We know
God through Christ, it is said. True; but we
know Christ fully only through the Spirit, which,
while it convinces us of sin, likewise convinces us
of his righteousness.

The Holy Spirit also communicates divine love
to our hearts. He reveals God, and gives us
the spirit of sons ; and we say, " Behold what
manner of love the Father hath bestowed upon
us, that we should be called the sons of God."
" We love him because he first loved us," and this
love communicates warmth and enthusiasm to
prayer.

And once more, what is most wonderful of all,
the Holy Spirit so identifies himself with our case
that he makes intercession for us, — intercession so
earnest that Paul describes it as " with unutterable

256 PRAYER AND PANOPLY.

groanings." In other words, God's own heart
pleads for us ; and our mightiest plea is there.

And now, as we move on, we are directed to
the quality of alertness in prayer. Literally the
the words are, " and being awake thereunto." No-
tice that thereunto, for it is the key of the sentence.
Watchfulness and prayer belong together, even as
our Lord put them together ; and the word here
falls in with what has already been said about
occasions or opportunities of prayer. Watch there-
unto ; that is, unto prayer, with reference to
prayer. Keep watch over prayer. When Scrip-
ture thus puts us on guard, we know that there is
either a great danger to be averted, or a great
treasure to be defended. In this case, there is
both a treasure and a danger. We have already
seen what a vital relation prayer sustains to the
whole Christian life. Cut that great main which
leads the water from the reservoir into yonder
city, and how long will it be ere the city is in
distress. Prayer is the medium of communion
with God, and without that communion there is
no Christian living ; and so the hymn has not put
it too strongly : —

"Prayer is the Christian's vital breath."

There is no life without God, and no contact
with God without prayer: so that, if Satan can
cut that main, the life is in his power ; and the
danger is linked with the treasure, as always.
Value implies danger. The poor man's cabin is
safe from thieves. The value of prayer, its vital

PRAYER AND PANOPLY. 257

importance to Christian life, makes it a centre of
temptation. A wise general will silence, if he
can, the battery which is doing his men the most
damage ; and, if it be true, that —

" Satan trembles when he sees
The "weakest saint upon his knees,"

it follows that Satan will leave no device untried
to keep that saint off his knees. As a fact of
experience, the tendency to neglect prayer is in
proportion to its importance. The excuses for
such neglect are familiar to you all : the pressure
of business, the unseasonable call, the concert or
lecture or assembly on the prayer-meeting night,
the mood of mind, — all these meet the Christian
on the way to the mercy-seat, and delay Mm, or
stop him altogether, until the roads to the closet
and the family altar and the place of social prayer
are grass-grown.

Hence prayer is a thing to be watched, —
watched as a habit to be encouraged by practice,
as a pleasure with which the Christian is to grow
into a sweet familiarity by frequent communings
with Him in whose presence is fulness of joy, as a
duty which he neglects at the peril of his spiritual
life. We should watch for occasions of prayer,
cultivating the habit of associating every detail of
our life with God. Often we are so placed that
our seasons for prayer must be brief. So much
the more need of distributing the communion over
the day. Your friend in the adjoining office is as
busy as you are. You cannot either of you find

258 PRAYER AND PANOPLY.

time to sit down for a long chat; but there are
frequent opportunities in the course of the day,
if you are on the lookout for them, to exchange a
word, or a sign of recognition. There is a good
deal of cheer sometimes in a friend's nod, or in
the wave of his hand. We may often exchange a
word or a look or a thought with God when we
cannot stop for a long interview. Men who are
travelling much, and can seldom sit down to a
meal, learn to eat by the way. Again, we ought
to watch before prayer. The best prayer comes
out of the best life. We ought to try to live so
that prayer shall not come in as something foreign
to our life, but rather so that our life shall run
naturally up into prayer. Prayer and life should
be of one piece. If we watch our lives, to hold
them close to God, our prayer will be simply
another form of our life. Sometimes we hear the
complaint, that social meetings for prayer are
spiritless and heavy ; and the explanation which
is most readily caught at is, that the leader of the
meeting does not understand his business. But
while this may be true, the difficulty is more likely
to lie with those who are led, in that prayer has
to overcome the terrible inertia of the prayerless
lives which they bring to the house of God.

And we must watch after prayer, to see what
becomes of our prayers. He would be a strange
archer who did not look to see where his arrow
struck, a strange merchant who did not care
whether his richly freighted ship arrived at her
port or not. If we pray, we pray presumably for

PRAYER AND PANOPLY. 259

something; and if that something never comes
into our lives, if our prayers never come back to
us in the shape of blessings, it is time we were on
the watch. David, in the fifth psalm, says, "I
will direct my prayer unto thee ; " but adds, " and
will look up."

That this watching is to be persistent, uin all
perseverance," follows naturally from what has
been said. The conflict with temptation is a life-
long one ; the necessity for prayer never ceases :
" Long as they live should Christians pray ; " and,
therefore, the necessity for watchfulness never
ceases.

And now, finally, the text directs us to the
objects of prayer. Prayer must not be selfish.
It is the language of the kingdom of God ; and the
kingdom of God is a community, a brotherhood.
Prayer is the expression of the life of God's king-
dom, and that life is social. We must pray for
ourselves ; but we must pray, also, for each other,
for the whole brotherhood of God, "for all the
saints." Christ himself teaches us to say, " Our
Father, give us bread, forgive our debts ; " and it
is with our prayer just as it is with our life. We
never learn the true sweetness and richness of life
until we have learned to live for others, and we
never reach the true blessing of prayer until we
have learned to pray for others. Such prayer re-
acts to make our prayers broader and stronger and
richer. It gives prayer a wider range, touches it
into a quicker sympathy, and pervades it with a
deeper emotion.

260 PRAYER AND PANOPLY.

And while prayer is to be made by the Church
for the whole Church, it is also to be made directly
and specifically for the leaders of the Church, for
the ministers of Christ, " and for me," says Paul ;
and he hints at some of the reasons why special
prayer should be made for him and for the class
which he represents. They have to proclaim un-
popular truths. They preach Christ crucified ; and
he is to the Jews an offence, and to the Greeks
foolishness. Hence they need courage. They are
tempted to hold back the truth. They need prayer,
that they may make known the truth with bold-
ness. Then, too, the truth they preach is a deep
and far-reaching truth. Preaching deals with the
infinite ; its theme is God in Christ, the mystery
of the gospel, — truth which no man can handle
unless he be taught of God. To bring that truth
home with power to the infinite varieties of mind
and character with which he has to deal, he needs
the wisdom from above, which God gives only to
those who ask in faith. He must ask this for
himself; but if the church of Christ is at one
with him, in the loving and saving intent of his
ministry, they will ask it for him. The strongest
bond between a pastor and his people is their
mutual prayer. I know that we all preach in-
effectively at times. I know that there is a large
class of society which emphasizes the foolishness of
preaching, and assumes that preaching is nothing
but foolishness. But it is too much overlooked,
that preaching is a thing in which the people as
well as the preacher have a share and a responsi-

PRAYER AND PANOPLY. 261

bility. When a minister has prepared and preached
his sermon, that service is not complete unless to
the sermon the prayers of the people are added.
Those prayers give a thrust and a momentum to
a sermon which all the preacher's intellect and
eloquence and piety cannot give. A sermon with-
out the people's prayers is shorn of half its power.
And it will turn out, I have no question, when
things shall be seen in the clearer light of another
world, that a very large part of the ineffectiveness
of preaching has been due to the prayerlessness of
the people. That eagle, with his strong wings,
and his light body framed to cut the air, could
not rise if there were no atmosphere for his wings
to beat against. Neither will a sermon rise and
fly to its lodging-place in men's hearts if the
prayers of the people do not bear it up. Paul
called himself an ambassador in chains. He spoke
literally. He was chained by the hand to a pre-
torian soldier. But many a minister of Christ is
equally an ambassador in chains, hampered and
fettered by the lack of his people's affectionate
and fervent prayers for him and for the Word he
preaches. You remember how Israel prevailed in
fight so long as Moses held up his hands ; but his
hands were weak, and would have dropped, but
that Aaron and Hur stood by his side, and held
them up.

Pray, therefore, Christian brethren ! Pray with
all kinds of prayer ; pray on all occasions ; pray
in the power and unction of the Holy Spirit;
mount guard over prayer. Pray for all the saints,

262 PRAYER AND PANOPLY.

pray for the ministers of the Word. This will
round and complete the Christian panoply. The
old fables tell how the gods used to make armor
for their favorite warriors, and bring it to them,
and set it up for their admiration and encourage-
ment. This armor of God is set up before your
eyes by God's messenger. It is no creation of
fable. These gifts of truth, salvation, hope, right-
eousness, faith, are real defences against the ar-
rows of the kingdom of darkness ; but they are of
little avail without prayer. Without prayer, you
and I will be no more to the church of Christ, no
more against the wiles of the Devil, than yonder
mailed statue on its pedestal.

XV.

THE DAYSMAN.

XV.

THE DAYSMAN.

" For he is not a man, as I am, that I should answer him, and
we should come together in judgment.

" Neither is there any daysman betwixt us, that might lay his
hand upon us both." — Job ix. 32, 33.

AT this point of the poem, we are seeing Job
at his worst. He has become desperate
under his accumulated miseries. His three friends,
instead of giving him the sympathy and tender-
ness which his wretchedness craves, take the atti-
tude of mentors, mete out to him reproach instead
of comfort, and, assuming that his trouble is God's
visitation for some secret sin, ply him with appeals
to humble himself and repent. Conscious that
he has hitherto served God faithfully, Job indig-
nantly denies and fights this cool assumption of
his guilt; but, in fighting away from this, he is
pushed back upon another question, which takes
on larger and larger proportions as he confronts
it: "If I am not afflicted because of my guilt,
as I refuse to believe, why am I afflicted ? " Why
are righteous men everywhere afflicted? The old
current theology of his day had but one answer
to give, — the answer elaborated by Bildad in the

265

266 THE DAYSMAN.

previous chapter, — God is just: therefore he must
send prosperity upon the good, and affliction upon
the bad. You are afflicted: therefore you are
guilty. Job, like many another man, had ac-
cepted that answer until he came to apply it to
his own case ; and then he found it would not
work. What an epoch it is in a man's thinking,
when he first finds himself compelled to doubt
and to challenge the long-accepted, first positions
of his thought. How completely at sea he is for
a while. The old moorings are swept away: to
what can he tie up ? The main movement of this
poem is the working out of just such a problem as
this. In the present chapter, Job answers Bildad.
He admits that God is just ; but from his infinite
justice, holiness, and power, he concludes that the
best man has no hope of being approved by him,
and runs into a passionate and wicked outbreak
against the Almighty, the amount of which is, that
God is simply an arbitrary tyrant, laughing at the
despair of the innocent, and giving over the earth
to the rule of wicked men.

This protest he clothes in the figure of a legal
trial. God comes into court, first as plaintiff and
then as defendant ; first asserting his rights, snatch-
ing away that which he has a mind to claim, then
answering the citation of the man who challenges
his justice. In either case man's cause is hope-
less : " He taketh away, and who can hinder him?"
If the subject of his power calls him to account, he
appears at the bar, only to crush the appellant, and,
with his infinite wisdom, to find flaws in his plea.

THE DAYSMAN. 267

As we push our way towards the storm-centre of
this whirlwind of passion, we find that it is not
utterly chaotic. At first feebly, vaguely, timidly,
certain lines strike out, growing more firmly drawn
and more definite in direction as the poem unfolds.
Certain deep-lying instincts begin to take shape in
cravings for something which the theology of the
day does not supply. The sufferer begins to feel,
rather than see, that the problem of his affliction
needs for its solution the additional factor which
was supplied long after in the person and work of
Jesus Christ, — a mediator between God and man.

Let ns note, in the first place, the peculiar facts
in Job's case which call out this desire. The point
of his complaint, as we have already seen, is, that
with the natural infirmity and fallibility of his
race, for which he is not responsible, he stands no
chance in trying conclusions with an infinite God
whose wisdom charges even the angels with folly,
and in whose sight the very heavens are not pure.
As he sees it, plaintiff and defendant have no
common ground. God is a being different in
nature and condition from himself. He is far
withdrawn, in his infinite majesty and holiness, in
a realm of pure intelligences, ruled by different
laws from those prevailing in this scene of confu-
sion. He sees man's weakness and error, only from
this stand-point. If, now, there were a human side
in God ; if his adversary were a man who knew
human life and the human heart and the pressure
of earthly limitations from actual experience, —
then, says Job, I could come into court with him

268 THE DAYSMAN.

with some chance of justice. Or, if this might not
be ; if there were only some daysman, some arbiter
or mediator who could lay his hand upon us both,
who could understand both natures and both sets
of circumstances, who should know both the
earthly and the heavenly economy ; if there were
but such an one to stand between us, and inter-
pret, and reconcile the one to the other, and compel
whichever of the two is wrong to do the other
right, — then all would be well.

It is wonderful, it is most pathetic, this bitter,
pitiful wail wrung from a tortured heart in those
far-ofT times , this cry for that better thing so fa-
miliar to us, and which we owe to the gospel of
the Son of God, — a mediator who lays his hand
on both God and man. And this leads us to ob-
serve, that this desire of Job's is to be studied,
not merely as the experience of an individual
under peculiar circumstances, but as a human
experience, the germs of which are in man as
man ; in other words, Job's craving for a media-
tor is the craving of humanity. Natural instincts,
indeed, are not infallible guides ; but they are
truthful suggesters. In the material world, it is a
familiar enough fact, that the indication of a want
is the indication of a supply somewhere. Supply
and demand answer to each other. The channels
which run up the trunk of a tree are infallible
signs of the tree's need of moisture, and are
answered by the streams which run among the
hills. A bird's wing implies air; the human
tongue, palate, and stomach imply food ; the ear is

THE DAYSMAN. 269

nothing without sound, nor the eye without light.
Shall we say that this law ceases to hold from the
moment we quit the material world ? " Nature,"
says one, " is true up to the heart of man : shall
nature suddenly become a false prophet then ? "
The cravings of the human heart for love, for
sympathy, for masterdom, for an object of worship,
for knowledge, — do not these declare that the
heart was made for these, and that somewhere in
the scheme of things there are answers and sup-
plies for these needs ? 1 If not, might we not well
ask with the Psalmist, " Wherefore hast thou made
all men in vain ? " Not a demonstration, indeed ;
but does not the groping of the human soul in all
ages and places for a God, at least suggest that the
soul was made for God, and more than hint at the

1 " It is altogether unlikely that man spiritual should be vio-
lently separated, in all the conditions of growth, development,
and life, from man physical. It is indeed difficult to conceive
that one set of principles should guide the natural life, and these,
at a certain period, — the very point where they are needed, —
suddenly give place to another set of principles altogether new
and unrelated. Nature has never taught us to expect such a
catastrophe. She has nowhere prepared us for it. And man
cannot in the nature of things, — in the nature of thought, in the
nature of language, — be separated into two such incoherent
halves. . . . After all, the true greatness of law lies in its vision
of the unseen. Law in the visible is the invisible in the visible ;
and to speak of laws as natural is to define them in their appli-
cation to a part of the universe, the sense part ; whereas a wider
survey would lead us to regard all law as essentially spiritual.
To magnify the laws of nature as laws of this small world of
ours is to take a provincial view of the universe. Law is great ;
not because the phenomenal world is great, but because these
vanishing lines are the avenues into the eternal order." —Henry
Drummond : Natural Law in the Spiritual World.

270 THE DAYSMAN.

existence of a being to meet these outstretched
hands, and take them tenderly into his own ?

Or Christ : has Christ been arbitrarily forced
upon the world to make his own place ? or is there
a place ready for him in the human heart ? Is
there no eternal relation between Christ and the
world's need ? Why is he called the " desire of all
nations ? " The need of Christ is not an artificial
need, created by conditions of knowledge and civil-
ization : it is a need embedded in the very struc-
ture of humanity. Christ meets an existing need.
Manhood was made for Christ. When antiqua-
rians, digging in the ruins of some old city, come
upon the half of a beautiful statue, they are at
once stimulated to search for the other half.
There are limbs and feet and a body, which
want a head and shoulders to complete them.
When these are found, it is evident enough that
the two parts belong together ; so, when Christ
comes, it is evident enough that there is a vacant
place which it was meant he only should fill. He
was meant for humanity ; but, equally, humanity
was meant for him. And with Christ goes this
fact of mediation. Mediation is not a dogma of
theologians merely. It is not an invention. It is
not an ingenious contrivance to get round or over
the two tremendous facts of a holy God and a sin-
ful humanity. It meets a human need and a
human craving just as truly as Christ himself
does. There is a place for mediation in man's
relations to God. There is a craving for mediation
in the human heart to which Job here gives voice.

THE DAYSMAN. 271

One needs but a moderate acquaintance with the
history of religion, to see how this instinctive long-
ing for some one or something to stand between
man and God has asserted itself in the institutions
of worship. What is the idol but the expression of
the Pagan feeling that the Supreme Being, what-
ever or wherever he be, is too remote from the
sphere of human life and suffering to be available ?
What are all attempts to figure or to symbolize the
divine, but confessions that man wants God trans-
lated into the terms of his own humanity ? What
is the lesson of that kneeling figure beneath the
cathedral arches, with eyes upturned to the image
of the Virgin-mother, but that that heart knows no
way to God save through a nature like its own ?
Men talk as if the incarnation were a thing utterly
monstrous, — a miraculous, arbitrary break into the
law of humanity ; seeming to forget that incarna-
tion is a demand of humanity ; that, from the very
beginning of human history, men have been striv-
ing to cast their conceptions of God and of God-
like qualities into forms or symbols which appeal
to flesh and blood. Job simply tells over again
the old, old story of the human heart ; this, name-
ly : God is so remote, the conditions of his being so
exceptional, his majesty and power so transcend-
ant, that direct approach to him is impossible unless
in something or some one the two lives and the two
conditions meet and blend, so that a daysman may
stand between, with one hand on weak, ignorant
man, and the other touching the divine throne
itself, and interpreting the one life to the other.

272 THE DAYSMAN.

This demand for a mediator is backed and urged
by two great interlinked facts, — sin and suffering.

Job's question here is, How shall man be just
with God? While he sturdily protests his inno-
cence of any conscious, wilful sin which deserves
this affliction, he never for a moment denies his
participation in the common moral infirmity of the
race; and his trouble lies just there. He urges
that man as he is cannot be just with God as he
is. Let him be as good as he may, his goodness is
impurity itself beside the infinite perfection of the
Almighty. And, really, it is hard to see how, from
Job's stand-point, he could reach any other conclu-
sion ; hard to see how any man could evade Job's
difficulty who should try to solve this problem
with only these two factors, — a righteous God,
revealed in nature, and a man, imperfect and err-
ing by his own nature. In other words, if Christ,
and all that Christ reveals of God, are dropped out
of the question, and the question is simply God's
approving recognition of man's merit, I do not
know that Job puts the case any too strongly.
Divine omniscience must detect spots in the best
obedience of human hands. It " dares not appear
before the throne." God cannot listen to any plea
of man based on his own righteousness. It must
break down, and the man must needs condemn
himself out of his own mouth.

Hence Job's mind, groping round for the un-
known quantity in this problem, was feeling its
way in the right direction when it struck upon
this thought of mediation, as was shown later,

THE DAYSMAN. 273

when God made that thought the very centre and
basis of the Levitical system. Between God and
man stood the priest, typically with his hand upon
both. No man went direct to God with the bur-
den of his sin. Some one must receive his gift,
and place it on the altar, and send it up in fra-
grant smoke to heaven. Now, the priest turns
towards God, entering within the veil with his
hands laden with incense, and there, in the awful
secrecy of Jehovah's pavilion, making atonement
for sin ; while the fragrant incense-clouds in wrap
the golden cherubim, and hover over the mercy-
seat. Again he turns toward the people, and lays
his hands upon the head of the scape-goat, confess-
ing over it the people's sin, and sending the beast
away to wander in the desert, — strange, uncon-
scious type of a nobler victim, mysterious, un-
conscious bearer of a nation's guilt. Thus turning
now to God, now to the people, himself compassed
with infirmity, bearing the names of the tribes ever
graven in sparkling gems upon his heart, touched
with compassion for the ignorant and for them
that are out of the way, yet admitted to the very
presence-chamber of Jehovah, — he stands, the first
divinely ordained type of the daysman, appointed
for men, in things pertaining to God.

You do not need to be told how beautifully the
writer to the Hebrews depicts Christ as the reality
answering to this type ; and a blessed reality we
find him when we face Job's old problem, How
shall man be just with God? and come with our
sins to his bar, to hold controversy with him.

274 THE DAYSMAN.

Throw Christ out of the controversy, and we say,
" How can I hope for sympathy or compassion at
the hands of this terrible holiness ? What can it
do with sin but condemn it ? What with the sin-
ner but punish him ? Here am I, weak and erring
by nature, compassed about by all sorts of tempta-
tions, my mind held down to earth by the neces-
sity of earning my own bread and my children's.
I am overworked, overstrained, often sick, irrita-
ble, petulant ; and I make, at best, but a bungling
business of a spiritual life. I might urge these
things in extenuation of my case if God were a
man as I am ; but how can I expect him, a being
so infinitely superior, seated on the inaccessible
heights of this pure heaven, with a nature to which
sin cannot appeal, — how can I expect him to con-
cern himself with these toils and hindrances and
burdens of mine ? " Thank God ! I can say to
such an one, " He is a man." I point him to God
manifest in the flesh. Between God's pure spir-
itual essence and you stands Christ, tempted and
tried like as you are : an High Priest enrolled
among men, and, as a man, able to uhave com-
passion upon the ignorant, and upon them that are
out of the way." He knows by actual contact the
power and seductiveness of evil ; he knows by
actual experience the hardest and most heavily
weighted side of life : and he is touched, not only
with the knowledge, but with the feeling, of your
infirmities. No depth of sorrow so low that he
has not been down there ; no road so rugged or
thorny that he has not walked every step of it;

THE DAYSMAN. 275

no agony of pain so intense that he has not been
racked by it. And so, as yon come to God by
him, you learn that your Judge is also your sym-
pathizer. In coming to God, " the Judge of all,"
you find that you come to " Jesus, the Mediator,
the Daysman of a new covenant." You learn
through him, the Incarnate Word, what you never
could learn so well from any written word, that
the God who moulded this dust knoweth the frame
which he has made, remembereth that it is dust,
cares for every grain of that dust, and pitieth
them that fear him, even as a father his children ;
for even they that fear him — his most reverent,
most loyal sons and daughters — have need of pity.
This Saviour, this Son of man, in whom thrills the
very life of God, is able to come down to where
we are, and say to us, "God is just what I am.
He that hath seen me hath seen the Father."

So of forgiveness. Clean I surely am not, and
never can be, in God's sight. Moral perfection
in him I may admire from a distance, as I would
some glittering snow-peak of the Caucasus ; but it
is a different matter when I come to climb, and
try to find a refuge for my frailty in that perfect
beauty of holiness. Sinful as I am, how can I
hope that he will forgive ? What can I bring to
win his grace ? " Will the Lord be pleased with
thousands of rams, or with ten thousands of rivers
of oil?" Nay, "He hath showed thee, O man,
what is good ; and what doth the Lord require of
thee, but to do justly, and love mercy, and walk
humbly with thy God ? " What, indeed ! Is this

276 THE DAYSMAN.

a slight requirement ? Truly, to fill it out were
even harder than to bring the thousands of vic-
tims. To do justly, love mercy, walk humbly, —
that may seem to some an easy thing ; but, when
a man has once caught sight of God's holiness, as
Job had, and has learned God's ideal of justice,
mercy, and humility, he is not unlikely to reach
Job's conclusion. What shall I do, then ? How
shall I bear his hand upon me ? Even while I ask,
it is upon me ; and lo ! it is a pierced hand, scored
with the mark of the nail ; and I hear a voice :
" What the law could not do, in that it was weak
through the flesh, God, sending his own Son in
the likeness of sinful flesh and as an offering for
sin, condemned sin in the flesh : that the ordinance
of the law might be fulfilled in us, who walk not
after the flesh, but after the spirit." Thus I learn
that this terrible, holy God so loves and cares for
me that he is anxious to forgive me, — so anxious
that he becomes a man, in order that I may see
divine, forgiving love translated into human linea-
ments and human deeds and human words. Christ
says to me, "I offered this life because of your sins.
This hand upon you is God's hand ; and the voice
which speaks to you is God's voice, saying, 4 If you
confess your sins, he is faithful and just.' y' Mark
that. Not one jot of that awful justice abated;
yet still faithful to forgive your sins, and "to
cleanse you from all unrighteousness.,' Through
him I learn not only how a penitent soul may urge
confidently its plea at the divine bar, but how it
may be fully justified by faith, and have peace

THE DAYSMAN. 277

with God through our Lord Jesus Christ. The
forgiveness of sins. Every sabbath we repeat it,
" I believe in the forgiveness of sins," until it
has become a commonplace. But it is well some-
times to look beneath these commonplaces, and
see what they cover. Do we realize how much it
means for God to forgive sin ? Do we realize of
what infinite value the revelation and mediation
of Christ are in making that an article of faith?
Do we realize, as Job did, how hopeless it is to
seek to draw from Nature, which never forgives,
any comfort or teaching concerning the tender and
just dealing of infinite holiness with a finite and
erring man ?

Again, this craving for a mediator is awakened
by human experience of suffering ; a fact which is
intertwined with the fact of sin. This poor, tor-
tured patriarch ! Truly, from the Christian stand-
point, he is one of the most pathetic spectacles in
all history: no knowledge, no dream, of Christ;
no hint of such knowledge of God as is possible
only through Christ ; no hint of divine sympathy
or of loving purpose in affliction. Take up your
own bitterest sorrow, and go back with it to the
ash-heap on which Job sits, and put yourself as far
as possible in his place. Shut out the view of the
Christ on whose pierced hand you have dropped
your tears, while you have leaned against his heart,
and heard him whisper the higher lesson of sorrow,
— and will you wonder that Job broke out into
passionate despair? Will you wonder that his
heart cried out for just that which has been so

278 THE DAYSMAN.

ineffably precious to you ? Take his view of God
as his own magnificent words describe him, — over-
turning the mountains, and sealing the stars, and
striding upon the heights of the sea, and bring-
ing this tremendous energy to bear in afflicting a
poor, weak son of man, — and do you wonder that
he cried out for some one to stand between him
and that awful power and holiness? Ah! there
was no one to stand by Job, and say, "Look on
me. I am purer than thou art, yea, spotless and
sinless as God himself ; yet it pleased the Lord to
bruise me. Behold my hands and my feet. Thrust
thy hand into my side. Sit down here, and let me
tell thee of Gethsemane and Calvary, of agony such
as even you never endured. You cannot under-
stand this. You are shut up within the narrow
conception of affliction as punishment and retribu-
tion. I can show you, by my life and character,
how suffering ministers to perfection. I can show
you how, on that hard soil watered with tears,
grew up the manhood which is the world's pattern,
the world's hope, and the eternal joy and glory of
heaven." Christ steps forth from the darkness
which veils Calvary, and says to the great host
of the suffering, " Here is suffering which is not
retribution, suffering which is not the outpouring
of divine wrath, suffering ministered by perfect
love, and issuing in power and purity." I say
again, we need, our poor humanity needs, such a
daysman, partaker of both natures, the divine and
the human, to show us suffering on its heavenly as
well as on its earthly side, and to flood its earthly

THE DAYSMAN. 279

side with heavenly light by the revelation. The
transfigured and the crucified Christ — Christ who
had not where to lay his head, and Christ to whom
every knee shall bow — are one and the same.
Suffering and glory blend in him into greater
glory, and through him God's suffering servant
learns that he suffers with him that they may be
glorified together. In him we have the human
experience of sorrow and its divine interpretation.
Job's longing, therefore, is literally and fully
met. To the cry which comes from that far-off
wreck of earthly happiness, " He is not a man as I
am," we can answer to-day, " He is a man." To
the words, " There is no daysman to lay his hand
upon us both," we answer, " There is one God, and
one mediator between God and man, — the man
Christ Jesus." It is the fashion to decry this doc-
trine of mediation ; to say that there is no reason
why man should not go directly to God with his
sin and his suffering ; that God is loving and mer-
ciful, and ready to forgive. But it is sometimes
forgotten how much of the knowledge and convic-
tion of God's love and mercy are due to Christian
revelation. It will not do for us to receive our
ideas of pardoning love through Christ, and then
to turn our backs on Christ ; and I think that this
Book of Job serves, among other purposes, to
bring before us the picture of a man with all the
moral light of his time, with a moral character
indorsed by God himself, and show to us how
utterly helpless and hopeless such a man is in his
relations to sin and suffering without Christ, how

280 THE DAYSMAN.

his soul craves just such a mediator as Christ is.
" The craving to see God, and to hear him speak
to us, is," as has been well said, " one of the primi-
tive, inherent, and deepest intuitions and necessi-
ties of the human heart. No student of Job can
well believe that any thing short of a supernatural
revelation and a mediator both human and divine,
can satisfy the needs of such a creature as man in
such a world as this." Thus, this oldest of books
has its lesson, enforced and confirmed by the gos-
pel, for us of this latter day, — the lesson of the
need of a mediator. You need him when you come
to face the fact of your own sin. You will feel
your need of him more, the more clearly you shall
see into the terrible foulness and wide, destructive
reach of sin. You will need him to assure you of
God's willingness, yea, eagerness, to receive and
pardon, when, broken with contrition, you fear to
trust a holy God for forgiveness. You need him
to accomplish the work of pardon. You cannot
bear the burden of your sin alone. You cannot
render an equivalent to divine justice. God must
be just because he must be true to himself; and
so there is nothing for you but either to bear the
penalty, or to let some one come in between you
and God who can bear it for you, and say to you,
" Go in peace." O my friend ! talk not of mere
morality as answering this deepest need and crav-
ing of your humanity. You speak of the Sermon
on the Mount and its pure morality, and say that
is your model. You need no mediator : you will
live by that. Do you remember who gave you

THE DAYSMAN. 281

that code ? and do you not see that the personal
Redeemer and Saviour is behind and through that
code, and that it is practically ineffective without
him ? Do you not see, that, if you take Christ's
mediation from behind that code, it takes on the
semblance of the old tables of the law, that the
Mount of Beatitudes without Christ the Mediator
is a veritable Sinai clothed with lightnings ? That
perfect code, so holy, just, and good, — think you,
you will dare take your unaided keeping of it into
court with the God who framed it, and without
the Christ who effectuates it, and be justified?
God forbid }tou should try the experiment !

And you need him in the sorrow of which,
sooner or later, all are partakers. Divine love in
clouds and hurling bolts is an awful, inexplicable
mystery without this Daysman : with him sorrow
is interpreted, and what seems to be wrath ap-
pears as pure love.

Despise not this Mediator. Seek his interven-
tion. Come and lay the burden of your sin and
of your sorrow alike on him ; and it shall be with
you as in the words of Elihu, — " Thou shalt pray
unto God, and he will be favorable unto thee : and
thou shalt see his face with joy : for he will ren-
der unto man his righteousness."

XVI.

THE LESSON OF RIPENESS.

XVI.

THE LESSON OF RIPENESS.

" For when by reason of the time ye ought to be teachers, ye
have need again that some one teach you the rudiments of the
first principles of the oracles of God ; and are become such as
have need of milk, and not of solid food." — Heb. v. 12.

THERE are two clearly defined lines of teach-
ing in the New Testament, which, on a hasty
view, might seem to be contradictory. In the one,
great stress is laid on being childlike. Our Lord
is heard saying, " Whoso shall not receive the
kingdom of God as a little child, he shall not
enter therein;" and, "except ye be converted,
and become as little children, ye shall not enter
into the kingdom of heaven." Moreover, he in-
sists on this quality as a condition of spiritual
knowledge, and thanks the Father that he has
hidden the great truths of the kingdom from the
wise and prudent, and has revealed them unto
babes. On the other hand, we read such words
as these : " That we may be no longer children,
tossed to and fro and carried about with every
wind of doctrine ; " and again, " Therefore let us
cease to speak of the first principles of Christ, and
press on unto perfection ; " and once more, " Till

285

286 THE LESSON OF RIPENESS.

we attain unto the unity of the faith, and of the
knowledge of the Son of God, unto a fullgrown
man, unto the measure of the stature of the ful-
ness of Christ."

The two are not contradictory, but are, rather,
in complete harmony. They are only different
sides of one and the same truth. On the one side,
a Christian is never to lose the simplicity, the
trustfulness, the guilelessness, of childhood. His
growth must always be in the direction of these.
If being as a little child is a condition of entering
the kingdom of God, it is equally a condition of
abiding in that kingdom. If a Christian does not
grow in his sense of helplessness, and of depend-
ence upon the power of God and the sympathy of
Christ, he does not grow in the right direction.
But, on the other hand, Christian life, like natural
life, implies progress. No man receives the ful-
ness of the kingdom of God at once. There is an
infancy and a childhood of Christian experience ;
a feeble grasp of faith before the stronger grasp ;
an imperfect spiritual seeing before the clearer
vision; ignorance of the weakness of the human
spirit and of the devices of Satan, which gives
way before the results of larger experience ; su-
perficial conceptions of the word of God, which
are slowly replaced by firm apprehension of that
Word as spirit and life. As in the family, the
child, from being taught, gradually grows into
a position of authority, from being directed by
others, becomes self-determining, and has a voice
and an influence in the counsels of men; so, in

THE LESSON OF RIPENESS. 287

the great family of God, Christian maturity and
its accompaniments are recognized facts, — attain-
ments which the gospel treats not merely as privi-
leges, but as obligations. There is a Christian
manhood, in short, which is expected and required
of the child of God, in which, from being a recipi-
ent of gospel influences, he is to become their
defender, their illustrator, and their propagator.
This is the truth for our consideration. It is
embodied in these words of the text, addressed
to those who had been for a good while under
gospel training : " Ye ought to be teachers." Let
us look at —

The duty of being Christian teachers ;

The reason for that duty ;

Some specific features of that duty.

Ye, as followers and disciples of Christ, ought
to be teachers. One reason why Christ found it
expedient to go away in person from the world,
was, that the number of teaching-centres might be
multiplied. If he had remained in the world, and
depended upon his own personal instructions for
success, he would have reached comparatively few.
Instead of this, he sent the Holy Spirit, not con-
fined to place, but working simultaneously at
many points, in order to inform the hearts and
minds of men, and to make every Christian, in
some sense, a teacher. As plainly as words could
speak, he laid the burden of diffusing the gospel
upon his church. " Ye," he said to his disciples,
" ye are the salt of the earth. Ye are the light of
the world." Men are taught by the gospel that

288 THE LESSON OF RIPENESS.

their responsibility does not cease with their own
salvation ; that they cannot live out their Chris-
tian lives simply with reference to God and to
themselves ; that, from the fact of their being
members of society, they exert power for good or
for evil over other lives ; that they cannot be
Christians, and not teach.

And that which is a necessity, growing out of
the laws of human contact, Christ wants every
Christian to take consciously into his life as a
principle, and conscientiously to use and improve
that necessity for the extension of Christian truth
and the development of Christian life.

Thus the position and duty of each Christian,
as a teacher, are laid down among the very rudi-
ments of the gospel. " Ye ought to be teachers."

But this duty is here urged by one considera-
tion merely, to which we may confine ourselves.
The familiar rendering, "for the time, ye ought to
be teachers," entirely obscures the force of the
passage. One would naturally draw from it the
sense of "for the time being;" as if the duty of
Christian teaching were a temporary matter or a
thing of special occasions, instead of being of per-
manent and universal obligation. The meaning
is, rather, " by reason of the time ; " that is, be-
cause you have been for a long time under Chris-
tian influence, listening to Christian doctrine,
versed in Christian experience : by reason of the
time which has passed since you became Christian
disciples, you ought to be teachers. Here there
is the plain statement of a general principle : that

THE LESSON OF RIPENESS. 289

Christian knowledge and Christian experience ought
to be so developed by time as to become instructive
and helpful to others.

Time is an element of all growth ; and, wherever
there is growth, we expect fruitage as the outcome
of time. We are surprised and disappointed if the
man who has been for a score of years engaged in
business remains the mere petty shopkeeper he
was at the first, and does not become a power in
trade, a creator of new industry, a maker of wealth.
We do not expect the apprenticed mechanic to be
always an apprentice or an underling. Time is
needed to teach him how to handle tools, and to
make him acquainted with the capacity of mate-
rials : but, with the time, we expect to see him a
master-workman ; we look for him to develop new
resources out of his material, and new methods of
treating it, and thus to become a teacher to his
craft. The man who through all his years is
merely acquiring knowledge, and does not come in
process of time to give it out, may be a prodigy of
learning, but he is also a prodigy of uselessness,
no better than so much lumber. And the same
principle runs up into the moral and spiritual realm,
and prevails there. There is, as I have said, an
infancy and a childhood of Christian life in which
we may expect to see uncertain walking, crude
conceptions of truth, unwise zeal, and undisciplined
character; but we have a right to be astonished
and dismayed, if, after years of experience, that
character is no less crude than at the beginning.
When time brings to Christian character nothing

290 THE LESSON OF RIPENESS.

but childhood, we are entitled to regard it as we
regard the second childhood which waits upon
human age. We have a right to expect, as the
result of years, larger and clearer views of truth,
better denned conviction, more self-mastery, more
practical efficiency, and more consistency of life. I
know that the mere passage of time does not bring
all this to pass. Age and maturity are not the
same things ; but the gift of time in the Christian
economy is accompanied with a charge and obliga-
tion to redeem the time. Time is a trust. You
remember Peter's words: "If ye call on him as
Father, who without respect of persons judgeth
according to each man's work, pass the time of
your sojourning in fear: knowing that ye were
redeemed with the precious blood of Christ." In
other words, the time of life is to be passed in
godly sobriety and activity, because life has been
redeemed at the price of Christ's blood; and life
thus redeemed is a sacred trust to be accounted for
to our Father, God, who is a strict judge of every
man's work. The same truth is brought out in
the parable of the talents. The element of time
enters there. Time is given to the several ser-
vants, as well as five and two talents ; and time
enters into the general reckoning. The time given
is an element of the responsibility : " After a long
time, the lord of those servants cometh, and reckon-
eth with them ; " and then it appears that time, in
the Lord's mind, meant business, exchange, invest-
ment, profit. The servant who had failed to catch
this meaning, and had given his time to something

THE LESSON OF RIPENESS. 291

else than his talent, found himself in sovry plight
at the end. The man who represents mere time is
one of the most pitiable of spectacles. The simple
fact that he is old entitles him to no respect
beyond that which common humanity pays to
weakness. Old age is one of the loveliest things
in this world when it stands in front of an earnest
life, during which it has gathered sweetness out of
sorrow, charity out of contact with men, and wis-
dom out of experience ; but old age divorced from
character is not even respectable. And, if that is
true in general, it is pre-eminently true in the Chris-
tian sphere. It is a sad thing when a man has
been before the world for long years as a professed
follower and disciple of Christ, and when all he
has to show for it is that he is very old. Length
of days, be it remembered, is in the right hand of
wisdom.

And now let us look at a few of the points in
which, by reason of time, a Christian ought to
be a teacher.

He ought to be a teacher by reason of a ma-
tured faith, and that under three aspects : —

1. In respect of his own assurance of Christian
truth. A man, in this age, who does not encounter
much that is fresh and even startling in this depart-
ment, can hardly be said to be alive. One who,
in the course of an average life, has not changed or
modified some of his views of Christian truth and
doctrine, can hardly be said to have grown. A
great deal of the truth of Scripture is given germi-
nally, as a seed which keeps throwing out new

292 THE LESSON OF RIPENESS.

growths in the course of years. The Saviour said
that there were things which his disciples could
not understand at the time, but which would be
clear to them later. God often gives a central
core of truth, and then leaves it for human research
to formulate the truth. For example, he lays down
the truth, that all things were made by him ;
that the universe is ultimately the result of his
creative will. Science investigates, and attempts
to explain the physical facts of creation. The
Bible gives us no information about God's methods.
Science may discover the method if it is able ; and
it is reasonable, that science should give us new
light on these methods, and should modify or
change our views concerning them. To all that
new light, we may rightly open our windows. All
that we are asked to hold by as Christians is that
core of truth, that our Creator, and the world's
Creator, is the ever-living God. So the integrity
of the Bible, as the word of God, is a distinct thing
from certain questions about the Bible. It is not
affected by the showing of biblical criticism that
Solomon did, or did not, write the Book of Ecclesi-
astes, or Paul the Epistle to the Hebrews, or that
the Pentateuch was, or was not, made up of a series
of documents. On such questions, we have a right
to hold ourselves open to all the light which ear-
nest scholarship can give us ; and it would be
strange indeed if some of our traditional views
were not greatly modified, or even entirely changed.
But we profess to be Christians, and by that
profession we avow our faith in a certain body of

THE LESSON OF RIPENESS. 293

truth. Its elements, indeed, are few and simple,
but they are fundamental; and our Christianity
takes all its character and all its meaning from
them. Our Christianity, if it has any meaning at
all, means Christ, the divine Son of God, and not a
mere man like ourselves. It means Christ taking
our human nature on himself, Christ living in our
world, Christ crucified, Christ risen from the dead,
Christ ascended to heaven and living there forever,
and Christ the Judge of quick and dead. It means
God, our Creator and everlasting Father, and the
presence and energy of the Holy Spirit. It means
salvation through faith in a crucified Redeemer.
Whatever leaves this out is not Christianity. To
the w oiid, these may still be open questions ; to us
as Christians they cannot be open questions, any
more than the foundations of a house can be left
to be finished while the superstructure is going up.
The whole superstructure takes its shape and its
security from the foundations ; and whatever Christ
may be to others, if he is not the chief corner-stone
of our moral and spiritual life, that life has no set-
tled basis and no consistency. And if our Chris-
tian profession during all these years has been
any thing more than a name or a form, if it has
been, as our very profession implies, a living, gen-
uine experience of the saving power and daily
grace and sympathy of Christ, we ought by this
time to have reached settled convictions on these
points. We cannot be teachers otherwise. True,
effective teaching is bound up with the teacher's
conviction of the truth. Teaching is something

294 THE LESSON OF RIPENESS.

more than repeating lessons from books. In every
kind of teaching, success is measured by the degree
in which the truth has become a part of the teacher
himself. A truth suffers even by the advocacy of
a man whom it does not possess. And this is
pre-eminently true of Christian teaching. The
instructive power of the gospel resides very
largely in the lives which it shapes and pervades
and propels. The life is the light of men. Ye
ought to be teachers, but ye will not be if the
gospel is still an open question to you. Ye will
not be if your attitude towards its foundation-
truths is that of suspense.

You know and acknowledge the power there is
in profound conviction. In the discussion of social
or political questions, you know how deeply you
are often moved, even by a man who represents
what you do not believe, but who himself believes
it with his whole heart, and speaks out of the
abundance of his heart. Conviction carries power.
And, I repeat, this is not a matter of words only.
Most of you, if you teach at all, will do it more
by your life than by your words ; and you cannot
keep your life apart from your conviction of Chris-
tian truth, or from your want of conviction. If
your basis of Christian life is an open question,
the uncertainty and suspense will get into your
living. The New Testament recognizes a direct
relation between faith and conscience. Paul writes
to Timothy that "the end of the charge is love
out of a pure heart and a good conscience and
faith unfeigned ; " and Peter told the council at

THE LESSON OF RIPENESS. 295

Jerusalem that God cleansed the heart by faith.
And therefore faith which purifies the heart and
the conscience is the mainspring of right living ;
for out of the heart are the issues of life ; and
weakness or vagueness of faith will get into the
conscience, and will issue in weak and vague liv-
ing, and therefore will take out of the life its great
power of witnessing. Paul, in that same letter to
Timothy, tells us how well such faith as that
worked for teaching, — " The end of the charge is
love out of a pure heart and a good conscience
and faith unfeigned : from which things some hav-
ing swerved have turned aside unto vain talking ;
desiring to be teachers of the law, though they
understand neither what they say, nor whereof
they confidently affirm."

2. Again, time ought to develop faith, in the
sense of spiritual discernment, — clearer perception
of the things of the unseen world. That is some-
thing different from a man's feeling that he is
growing old, and realizing that his friends are
dropping around him, and that he must soon die.
Any man will be made to feel that in the course
of nature. The seaman may see the rocks and
shores fast falling behind, and hear the roar of the
surf, and yet have no outlook ahead. The outlook
is one of the great things in Christian experience.
As by reason of the time the old scenes and the
old friends fall into the background, we ought to
be getting clearer views of the great moral and
spiritual truths which have their roots in the
unseen world, and a deeper sense of their impor-

296 THE LESSON OF RIPENESS.

tance and power. It is not strange if a young
Christian simply believes in the things which are
not seen. It is strange if the older Christian does
not feel the power of the world to come. It is one
thing to assent to the truth that " the things which
are not seen are eternal ; " it is another thing to
apprehend that truth, and to take it into life as a
working principle ; to realize that the things on
which heaven stamps a value — love and faith
and purity and truth and good conscience — are
the paramount things, and to make every thing
give way to these.

That kind of spiritual seeing has a teaching
power. It is of the very essence of all teaching
that the man who sees what we do not see, brings
us to his feet to learn. When we want to know
about the stars, we go to the scholar who has the
telescope. And the life which one lives by faith
in the unseen, teaches. It does what all true
teaching must do, — it excites attention, it awak-
ens inquiry, it communicates enthusiasm. Paul
says, " Our conversation, or our citizenship, is in
heaven." The stranger who tarries among us for
a little while, born of another race, subject to
another government, clad in another costume,
receiving his instructions from beyond the sea,
all his hopes and interests centring in that coun-
try which he sees with his mind's eye, all his
expectation converging towards his return thither,
— that stranger is a marked man. He awakens
our curiosity to know something of his country
and institutions; and, as we talk with him, we

THE LESSON OF RIPENESS. 297

catch something of the flavor of that land which
we never caught from the descriptions of our
geographies. A ripened Christian, with his citi-
zenship in heaven, brings to us in like manner the
flavor of the heavenly world. The world learns
how a man may live and thrive on meat which
they know not of; learns the power there is in
those heavenly qualities of meekness and faith,
and poverty of spirit, which seem to it so puerile ;
learns how he can endure as seeing Him who is
invisible. A quality steals into his life and words
which gives the worldly man hints of a country
strange to him, and a subtle attraction gets into
his life which affects the most world-hardened
heart.

3. And time ought to have ripened faith in the
sense of restfulness. We count it strange if natu-
ral manhood does not bring with it increased com-
posure, tranquillity, balance. Shall we count it
any less strange if, with the lapse of time, Chris-
tian manhood does not become better poised, more
restful and quiet, less easily thrown off its balance ?
Have we not had experience enough of God's
strength to make us settle down on it, and trust it?
Have we not found out so well how much better
he can take care of us than we can take care of
ourselves, that we have learned, not only to put
ourselves in his hands on occasion, but to stay
there all the while, and to be uneasy only when we
do not feel the pressure of the Everlasting Arms ?
That kind of restfulness has a teaching-power.
You know how naturally, in any time of danger or

298 THE LESSON OF RIPENESS.

confusion, all eyes turn to the man who is calm
and self-poised. Even the gay, dissolute heathen
poet had learned to admire the man just and firm
of purpose, and eloquently pictured him as one
whom neither mobs, nor the frown of tyrants, nor
the wrath of storms, nor even the world falling in
ruins, could disturb ; 1 but a higher lesson is taught
by him who can say, " Who shall separate us from
the love of Christ? shall tribulation or anguish
or persecution or famine or nakedness or peril or
sword ? Nay, in all these things we are more than
conquerors through him that loved us. For I am
persuaded, that neither death, nor life, nor angels,
nor principalities, nor things present, nor things
to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor
any other creature, shall be able to separate us from
the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our
Lord." We are seeking rest. These men who have
come to Christ, and have found rest, have power to
teach us, and to tell us where to find it. We
Christians, who by reason of time should have
entered deeply into this rest, ought to be teachers.
By reason of the time, a Christian ought to
have been confirmed in the habit of communion
with Grod. Our hymn says, that " prayer is the
Christian's vital breath," and that he learns to
pray, as to breathe, when first he lives. That is
true. But you know that an infant's breath is
feeble. Prayer is a subject of discipline. No man
learns all its resources at once. No man learns how

i Horace, Ode 3, b. III.

THE LESSON OF RIPENESS. 299

to pray as lie ought all at once. To a young Chris-
tian, prayer is commonly a matter of systematic
observance ; and that is a good thing. It is a part
of his training in the art ; but it usually takes
time to make prayer the atmosphere of the life,
and communion with God the habit of the soul.
A young Christian is very likely to call in God
after he has done his very best in something, and
has found his own strength fall short. A ripened
Christian begins by assuming that his own strength
is perfect weakness, and so calls in God at once.
I have somewhere seen a little story of a king who
had employed some people to weave for him, had
supplied them the materials and the patterns, and
had told them, that, if they were ever in trouble
about their work, they were to come to him with-
out fear. Among those at the looms was a child ;
and one day, when all the rest were distressed at
the sight of the tangles in their yarn, they gath-
ered round the child, and asked, " Why are you so
happy at your work ? These constant tangles are
more than we can bear." — " Why do you not tell
the king ? " said the little weaver. " He told us
to, and that he would help us." — " We do," replied
they, " at night and at morning." — "Ah ! " said the
child, " I send directly whenever I have a tangle."
Brethren, we ought to have reached that point by
reason of time, — that habit of referring every-
thing at once and directly to God ; just as, when we
are walking with a friend, we naturally refer to
him every matter of interest as it comes up. That
habit of communion with heaven sets its mark on

300 THE LESSON OF RIPENESS.

the life and invests it with a teaching-power. If
one draws from cultured associations a quality
which impresses itself on other minds in a way
they cannot understand, surely familiar converse
with heaven will impart its quality to a Christian.
Cowper's lines are worth quoting : —

" When one who holds communion with the skies
Has filled his urn where those pure waters rise,
And once more mingles with these meaner things,
"Tis e'en as if an angel shook his wings :
Immortal fragrance fills the circuit wide,
And tells us whence these treasures were supplied."

By reason of time, a Christian should have be-
come a teacher in the matter of habitual consis-
tency of life, obedience, and docility.

Surely, surely, though the patience of God is
wonderful, and the grace of God abounding, we
should not continue in sin that grace may abound.
True, we shall be erring mortals to the very end,
compassed about with infirmity. True, no day
will ever pass but that, to the prayer, " Give us
our daily bread," we shall need to add, " Forgive
us our debts." But certainly, by reason of time,
we should have gained some power over tempta-
tion in the course of our experience of temptation.
We should have learned to keep habitually away
from the paths where we have stumbled and fallen.
It is strange, something is wrong, if we are still
committing and repenting of the same old sins
which we began to fight long ago. As the lines of
that living epistle which we began writing when
we entered Christ's service creep farther down

THE LESSON OF RIPENESS. 301

the page, they ought to be more fairly and even-
ly written. In short, though we shall never be
perfect men and women, though the nearer we get
to Christ, the less we shall be pleased with our-
selves, — yet we ought to be better men and women
by reason of the time, and, by our better living of
the gospel, be teachers to those about us.

And, by reason of the time, we ought to be
broader in our charity. Our own experience
ought to have given us an insight into our own
weakness and fallibility, and to have made us cor-
respondingly tolerant of the weakness and falli-
bility of our brother men. Where we have
stumbled so often, we shall not jeer when a brother
stumbles. It was to those very Christians who
had made the greatest attainments in the Christian
life, that Paul referred for restoration those who
should be taken in a fault : " Ye which are spirit-
ual, restore such an one in the spirit of meekness."
He knew that real spiritual maturity, so far from
making one censorious and self-righteous, turned
him upon his own heart to consider its weakness,
and made him the best and most sympathizing
helper to his fallen brother.

Ye ought to be teachers. There ought to be
more fruit of Christian maturity in the church of
Christ. How a church, made up largely of Chris-
tians who have tasted the good word of God and
the powers of the world to come, and in whom
years have wrought, along with Cod's processes of
discipline, to compact and balance and ripen char-
acter, — how such a church ought to tell on the

302 THE LESSON OF RIPENESS.

community ! — a church of teachers as well as of
learners, teaching by godly life and conversation ;
teaching by the poise and symmetry of charac-
ter ; teaching by calm courage and steady persist-
ence ; teaching by the power of a faith which links
their life with the principles, the motives, the joys,
the aims, and the hopes, of heaven; teaching by
their solid grounding in the word of God, and in
the great truths of redemption : this is no fanciful
ideal, no chimera of a religious enthusiast. It is
the pattern of a Christian church held up by in-
spiration itself. The word of the apostle comes to
us this morning (God grant it may come with
fresh meaning under the power of the Spirit !) :
" That we may be no longer children, tossed to
and fro and carried about with every wind of doc-
trine, by the sleight of men, in craftiness, after the
wiles of error ; but speaking truth in love, may
grow up in all things into him, which is the head,
even Christ."

XVII.

STRENGTH, VICTORY, AND KNOWL-
EDGE IN YOUTH.

XVII.

STRENGTH, VICTORY, AND KNOWLEDGE
IN YOUTH.

" I write unto you, young men, because ye have overcome the
evil one. ... I have written unto you, young men, because ye
are strong, and the word of God abideth in you, and ye have
overcome the evil one." — 1 John ii. 13, 14.

COUNSEL is the prerogative of age. Chris-
tianity is pre-eminently an experience. That
which is most quickening in it is born of experi-
ence ; and experience, in its turn, is born of years.
It is not strange, therefore, that the venerable
John should assert the privilege of his age, no
less than of his position, in writing to young
men. These are Christian young men whom he
addresses. They have overcome the Evil One, and
the word of God abideth in them. Nevertheless,
they are not, for that reason, beyond the necessity
of wise counsel. Youth may, and does often, serve
Christ loyally ; but it cannot fully appreciate the
quality and reach of Christ's mastery. Youth may
be taught, and may believe, that Christ's person
and truth are the very core and kernel of all life
and of all history ; but time alone makes them
realize that Christ not only fits everywhere, but

305

306 STRENGTH IN YOUTH.

gives the law everywhere. Youth may be told, and
may acknowledge, that the world passeth away;
but it does not feel it, and especially it does not
feel that the desire of the world is passing away.
Age knows that it is passing away, because, for it
so much of the world has already drifted out of
sight ; and therefore the claims of the will of God,
as against the love of the world, come with no such
emphasis as from the lips of age.

But we are concerned this morning, not so much
with the counsels of this aged and beloved apostle
as with the assumptions which underlie them, and
which, as it seems to me, are quite out of the line
of our popular Christian sentiment.

For we commonly look upon youth as a season
of tutelage. Whatever we may concede to it, —
and we concede very much, as will shortly appear,
— we regard it as unripe. Even from the religious
stand-point, we look upon youth as militant, rather
than as victorious. The fight with the Evil One is
upon them ; but the victory, we take for granted,
is in the future. We are disposed to be lenient
when the Evil One gets the upper hand for the
time. We do not expect them to have the word
of God abiding in them, to be possessed by the
spirit and power of the Word. We accept the
partial and remittent influence of the Word upon
them as a necessity of their age. We know they
are strong; but we do not expect them to be strong
in God, and in the power of his might.

Are we right in this view of the religious possi-
bilities of youth ? Certainly not, if our apostle is

STRENGTH IN YOUTH. 307

right ; for this assumption of ours directly contra-
dicts his. He addresses the young men as strong,
as having overcome the Evil One, as having the
word of God abiding in them. Is he thinking of
a few exceptional young men ? He does not put
the matter in that way. He writes to the Chris-
tian youth of the Church generally. If he had said
only, "Ye are strong," we might have construed
his words to mean merely the native freshness
and vigor of youth ; but his words are of spiritual
strength, spiritual knowledge, and spiritual victory.

The question, therefore, is very pertinent, whether
we are justified in looking for only a crude, feeble
Christian development in youth; whether we do
not set the standard too low, and therefore encour-
age them to do so.

Now, in fact, we reason just as John does, when
we look at youth in its relations to society. On
that side, we frankly recognize their strength, vic-
tory, and susceptibility to truth. As for strength,
young men are accepted as important factors in
the active and aggressive relations of life. They
are invited to posts of responsibility ; they occupy
positions of trust in business ; they come to the
front in politics ; men put their legal tangles into
the hands of young lawyers, and intrust their
own and their children's lives to young physi-
cians.

In like manner we assume their ability to re-
ceive and apply the teachings of human wisdom.
They come under the power of the great masters
of thought ; they are set to study Plato and Aris-

308 STRENGTH IN YOUTH.

totle and Kant in the schools ; they discuss among
themselves the theories of political leaders; they
read with zest the writings of great scientists ; the
word of a Huxley, a Tyndall, a Spencer, abides in
them, and shapes their thought. They are trained
by the masters of painting and music ; they appre-
ciate the pictures of Murillo and Raphael, and the
harmonies of Beethoven and Wagner.

So of victory. Youth overcomes. It wins vic-
tories in the world of mind. It gains the world's
ear, and helps to shape the world's opinions. The
history of great literary successes is largely a his-
tory of youthful triumphs ; it displays an intel-
lectual vigor equal to its physical power ; it faces
great problems of practical life, and solves them ;
it makes a place for itself in spite of obstacles.
In the secular sense, it does overcome the world.
Youth exhibits a strong individualism. There is
no parent who has not at some time awaked, as
out of a dream, to the fact that the children, whom
he had been wont to regard as mere reflectors of
his opinions and practice, have developed a quality
of self-assertion and self-determination ; that they
have formed opinions of their own, and are moving
upon lines of life and thought quite different from
his ; that they are no longer integral parts of his
life, but distinct units. And, as time goes on, he
finds that these self-determinations are not mere
caprices, but that they have direction and con-
sistency, and work themselves out to definite re-
sults. In short, we admit that strength, victory,
mental receptiveness, and power of assimilation,

STRENGTH IN YOUTH. 309

are characteristics of youth, as such, apart from all
its moral relations.

After we have thoroughly taken in this fact, we
may be disposed to look again at John's words,
and to ask why the fact should not hold equally
on the moral and religious side of youth : in other
words, why youth, who are susceptible to the best
thoughts and principles of masters in science and
art ; youth, who win intellectual and social and
material victories ; youth, who are strong on every
other side, — should be only half-mastered by the
word of God, devoid of all spiritual definiteness
and force, and mere defeated weaklings in the
greatest of all battles, — the battle with tempta-
tion and sin.

The text, then, does certainly assert two things :
first, That youth is a power; second, That it is
a power for holiness. And I hold its teaching,
therefore, to be, that we have a right to expect
of our Christian youth, Christian vigor, Christian
knowledge, and Christian victory. Let us look at
each of these points.

I write unto you, young men, because ye are
strong. There may be strength without maturity.
People act upon that principle everywhere. A
man who wants a good horse looks out for a young
horse. A lady who wants an active and useful
servant does not seek for an old man or woman.
Not only so, but we expect real and telling ser-
vice from youth. The business man who employs
a young man as cashier or book-keeper gives over
those departments of the business to him, and

310 STRENGTH IN YOUTH.

expects that the books will balance, and that the
finances will be kept in order. He does not expect
him to be a weak, nerveless, unreliable element in
his business, always making mistakes, and requir-
ing to be helped on by older men. He takes him
as a power. Ought the case to be any different
in the church of Christ? Young men, I know,
cannot fill all places in the church, even as the
book-keeper cannot fill the place of the capitalist ;
but there are places which they can fill, and where
we have a right to expect that they will be powers.
The work of instruction and of counsel may be left
to maturer Christians ; but the work of the church
is not confined to instruction and counsel. It has
an aggressive side, where strength is in demand.
The work of pushing the gospel into new fields,
of bringing other youth under its influence, of
carrying on benevolent and missionary enterprises,
is work which young men and women can do.
You show that you can do it when you undertake
it. An organization, formed and sustained by
young ladies in this city, has issued in a reading-
room for messenger-boys, which harbored some-
thing like a thousand of these little fellows in one
year. There were heathen scattered along this
avenue and elsewhere in the city. You young
men were urged to try and bring them under
Christian influence ; and you went out, and sought
the Chinaman in his laundry, and brought him
here, to teach him to read, and to speak our
tongue, and to tell him of Christ. You have done
it, and you are doing it ; and I doubt if even yet

STRENGTH IN YOUTH. 311

you wholly appreciate the reach of your work, or
the fact that you have quietly addressed your-
selves to the practical solution of a problem which
has occupied the attention of the church councils,
without waiting for thern.

There is a small hospital in this city where little
or no provision was made for religious services.
Last winter I found that two or three young men
— one of them, at least, a member of this church,
and I am not sure but all of them — had quietly
taken the matter in hand, and were regularly hold-
ing services there ; and I learned, too, of the ability
and efficiency with which they were doing that
work, and how eagerly their coming was looked
for each week by the inmates of those wards.

Yes, you are strong ; and the church of Christ
lays claim to your strength. You came into the
church to serve, not to be entertained. When you
came before these altars, to profess your allegiance
to your Lord, he met you there, and asked you to
put your strength at his disposal ; and, if you do
not recognize that claim, you are blind to your
duty. If you do not respond to it, you are untrue
to the Christ whom you profess to serve. Service
is not to be an incident of your Christian life : it
is to be its law, as it was the law of Christ's life.
The sooner you accept the truth, that as Christians
you live for other people, the sooner you will be
down upon the firm, hard base-rock of the gospel
theory of life. Some one once said, that a high-
wayman demands your money or your life ; but
Christ demands your money and your life. I

312 STRENGTH IN YOUTH.

would have you recall the words which were read
to you when you professed your faith before the
church : " We are now receiving you to take part
with us in maintaining the honor of the church
of Christ, and in the defence of the faith once
delivered to the saints." I beg that you will not
think those words meaningless. We conceive that
Christ and his church do you honor by inviting
you, not as children to be pleased and amused,
but as strong to help us in our fight against the
Devil.

But the question is not only of Christian work :
it is also of Christian character lying behind the
work, and inspiring it. There can be no good
work without good character. Here we see, that
the strength of which John speaks is the strength
which comes of the abiding of the word of God
in the heart, and of victory over evil. He assumes
that youth may have fixed principles, positive,
religious character, and victory over temptation :
" Ye have overcome the evil one." Youth's record
may include moral victory. And here we are
dealing with fact, and not merely with theory.
Youth, as we very well know, is not characterless.
Strong traits, positive, definite tendencies, emerge
in the very child. A moral bias in one or the
other direction reveals itself very early, and often
with a force which neither discipline nor punish-
ment seems able to control. Youth is susceptible
to bad influences, — takes them in, is shaped by
them. Is it not likewise susceptible to good ones ?
Bad character in youth is a positive and acknowl-

STRENGTH IN YOUTH. 313

edged fact. Is not good character in youth equally
a fact? Evil in youth overcomes good influences.
Is it impossible that good in youth should over-
come evil influences? So far as religious prin-
ciple is a matter of knowledge and training, the
great truths of morals and religion are as easily
comprehended by the child as the principles of
arithmetic and grammar which he learns in the
school. The child of five years may, and often
does, learn them, and apply them successfully to
the conquest of his little temptations, which have
as much moral significance as the mightier and
subtler allurements addressed to the mature man.
As a fact, Ave see that young people, very young
people, do develop positive religious character.
With all the sneers at early piety, early piety is a
blessed fact. And why not? It is very evident
what youth can do in the way of victory over self
and temptation, when a great worldly end is to be
gained. How many young enthusiasts in art will
deny themselves to the last pinch, in order to go
abroad, and, when there, will resist temptations to
self-indulgence, and live in a garret on a pittance,
while they are studying music or painting ! How
many a young man, in order to acquire a college
education, will stint himself in the very necessi-
ties of life, and imperil eyes and health, and bear
the sneers of fops at his poor clothes ! He gets
his education, he overcomes ; and are we to say
that the young Christian, with Christ's inspiration
in his heart, and Christian influences around him,
and God behind him, shall not take up the great

314 STRENGTH IN YOUTH.

crosses of Christian service, and practise its grand
self-denials, and resist and overcome the world,
the flesh, and the Devil? Shall not his youth
already have scored some victory over evil, and
have developed some determinate character and
some fixed principles against which the floods of
temptation shall break in vain? Are we to as-
sume that youth must be always weak and van-
quished on its moral side ? Must we admit that
the Devil is always stronger than youth, and
weaker than ripe manhood only? To do this is
to give the lie to Christ's words about Heaven's
interest in the little ones. It is to say, that, while
God suffers the fight with temptation to come with
all its fury upon youth, he gives the victory only
to ripe age. And the Bible biographies, at least,
do not tell us that story. A large proportion of
the great moral slips recorded in Scripture have
been made by middle-aged and old men : Noah,
Job, Lot, Moses, David, Solomon, Elijah, Peter,
are startling comments on the truth that moral
weakness is peculiar to no age ; while, on the
other hand, young Joseph, young David, young
Saul, young Samuel, young Ruth, young Josiah,
young Timothy, — all testify that moral strength
and victory are peculiar to no age. No : John is
right. He does not assert too much when he
says, " Ye have overcome the evil one." If youth
can be Christian, it can overcome. If it is truly
Christian, it will overcome ; for Christ is victory.

And once more, what of the Word abiding in
the young ? " The word of God abideth in you."

STRENGTH IN YOUTH. 315

In the order of the text, this comes before the
conquest over the Evil One, and rightly ; because
the Word in the heart stands to conquest as means
to end. John's thought here centres in the word
"abideth." His emphasis is on the permanent
power of the Word over youth. This means
more than the pleasant memory of old Bible-
stories carried by youth from childhood. It
means more than the transient interest in an
eloquent sermon. It means, rather, the Word's
mastery of the young ; the Word in the heart, no
less than in the memory ; the Word as the law of
the life ; the Word as the well-wielded weapon
of moral victory, — the sword of the spirit, with
which Christ, in the freshness of his manhood,
met and vanquished Satan in the wilderness.

This mastery by the Word, John assumes as a
fact in addressing the young men : " The word of
God abideth in you." Paul assumes the same
thing with reference to Timothy. He calls to
mind the unfeigned faith which dwelt in his
mother and in his grandmother, and adds, "And
I am persuaded that in thee also." Young people
have, many of them, come to think that such
mastery by the Word is impracticable. They
think they must master the Word before they are
mastered by it. They get hints, and sometimes
more, of grave discussions which are going on
over the Bible ; and they come to think of the
study of the Bible as a labyrinth of hard questions
which must be left to theologians, and with which
they have nothing to do. The consequence of

316 STRENGTH IN YOUTH.

this is, that the Word gets no hold on them, even
as they get no hold on the Word. The Bible, it is
trne, cannot be mastered, if mastering it means
understanding all that it contains and suggests.
Divine truth must always have a side of mystery,
from the very fact that it is infinite. If you and
I could perfectly master the Bible, we should not
need it. But if the difficulties of the Bible are a
reason for neglecting it, they are equally a reason
for neglecting God and Christ. We cannot find
out God by searching, and yet we pray to this
God whom we do not wholly know. Enough can
be known to call out our adoring love and our
implicit trust. We do not deny God because we
cannot perfectly understand him. Why should
we refuse his Word ? In science and art and phil-
osophy, the difficulty of a subject does not repel
youth. They study, and that intelligently, the
works of master minds. They comprehend diffi-
cult subjects. They work out hard problems in
engineering and astronomy. And what I com-
plain of in a certain class of young people is, that
they will not apply to the Bible the same amount
of attention and labor which they bestow on other
things. When they meet a hard question in
physics or mathematics, they go to their teachers,
and discuss it : but they will read, and brood over,
the words of infidel philosophers and lecturers ;
they will take up the cheap, superficial objections
against the Bible, and never examine for them-
selves how much they are worth, or consult their
religious teachers, who could enlighten them.

STRENGTH IN YOUTH. 317

What great book does not present difficulties?
There has been as hot discussion over the author-
ship of Junius' letters, as vigorous cross-firing on
the Homeric question or the worthless epistles of
Phalaris, as subtle criticism on Shakspeare, as there
has been over the Pentateuch or the Gospels. And
yet young people read Homer and Shakspeare, and
enjoy them. Why not the Bible also ? There is
enough in the Bible which the child can under-
stand, enough which the youth can grasp, — fully
enough to give it the mastery of the young life.
Whatever mystery may attach to the Bible, the
materials for character-building lie on its very
surface. If there are parts of this great divine
map which we must still mark " unknown land,"
the track to goodness and to heaven is sharply
drawn. The wayfaring man, though a fool, need
not err therein. It is enough for the seaman that
his compass points to the north, even though it
does not lead him into strange seas, which he is
curious to explore. You may not know all the
rich ore which lies buried in this mountain of God,
but its duty side is out in the sunlight : the very
children can climb it towards heaven, and gather
fruits and flowers on its massive sides. The young
men and strong men can move upward over its
rocks into the pure atmosphere of the high lands,
and see from its lofty outlooks the rich pastures
of the kingdom of God, and the far horizons of
divine truth. We have inspired authority that
the young may live a clean and godly life by the
use of God's Word : " Wherewithal shall a young

318 STRENGTH IN YOUTH.

man cleanse his way? by taking heed thereto
according to thy word."

You are, then, as young men and women, bound
by your Christian profession to have the word of
God abiding in you, as a permanent impulse and
formative force in your character and life. It is
for you as well as for age. You can appreciate its
calls to faith in God and Christ, to purity of life, to
industry, to patience, to consistency, just as well
as I can. The Holy Spirit is as ready to make
its precepts a living power in you as he is in me.
It is not a question of your familiarity with theo-
logical problems, but of your reception of plain,
practical truths. It is indeed knowledge that is
bound up with personal character. The Bible in-
structs you, that it may form you. It gives you
knowledge, that you may translate it into good-
ness and spiritual power. If you can grapple with
current questions of science and politics, you can
take in the truth that there is a God, your Cre-
ator, who claims to be remembered in the days of
your youth ; that there is a Christ, your Saviour,
and that you can come to him as he invited even
the children to do ; that Christ gives the law to
life ; that duty is better than sin ; that Christ
points towards unselfish service. And you can
appreciate the point of warnings, the comfort of
promises, the inspiration of noble examples, the
stir of calls to duty. You know, in other spheres,
what it is to work on a principle and for a pur-
pose ; and it is no harder to know this when the
principle is laid down by Christ, and when the

STRENGTH IN YOUTH. 319

purpose is holiness and heaven. The word of God
abideth in you. O young Christians ! can you say
this morning that this is true of you? Has the
Word which godly parents and teachers instilled
into your childhood been welling up in your lives
ever since with a fuller flood? Has that Word,
which you promised to study and cherish when
you confessed Christ before the church, been a
steadily working and growing power in your life ?
Have you kept this heavenly guest with you by
constant questioning and communing? Has the
power of the Word over you become stronger,
more steady, more direct, since you began to fol-
low Christ?

This, which the apostle assumes of youth, is,
therefore, to be your ideal. You ought to be, as
young Christians, strong and victorious, under the
mastery of God's Word; and that, not only for
your own sakes, but for the sake of the Church
and of the world. Vagueness, wavering in the
character of our Christian youth, menace great
interests of the future. You are back one or two
ranks: you do not see what is coming, as we
do who are at the front. We would not have
you brought suddenly to face dangers for which
you are unprepared, and against which the great
defence will lie in your pure and Christ-like char-
acter, your thorough mastery by the power of the
Word. A few years more, and our heads will no
longer be between you and the enemy's advance.
We shall be down, and carried off the field ; and
the brunt of the battle will be on you. A fight is

320 STRENGTH IN YOUTH.

coming on from many points. The thoughtful,
the studious, the educated among you, will have
to face religious and social problems which are
daily rolling up complications. If the next age is
to be a victorious age for the gospel, its professors
must go into the fight with settled convictions,
with established moral principles, with a steady en-
thusiasm for Christ, with a faith that can remove
mountains. Whatever your education, whatever
your culture, you can all alike compass the apos-
tle's ideal of godly character ; and character, quite
as much as knowledge, is going to decide this con-
flict. You can have the word of God abiding
in you, and be thoroughly under its power, and
shaped by its precepts. You can overcome the
evil one. You can be strong, — strong in God
and in the power of his might. May he give you
the victory !

XVIII.

GOD AND THE TIMES OF IGNO-
RANCE.

XVIII.

GOD AND THE TIMES OF IGNORANCE.

" The times of ignorance therefore God overlooked ; but now
he commandeth men that they should all everywhere repent."
— Acts xvii. 30.

THERE are few scenes in Scripture or else-
where of more profound interest and mean-
ing than that of Paul on Mars' Hill. In the
Athenian people and civilization, the heathen in-
tellect and the heathen faith attain their climax.
Athens represents the very best and most that
either of these could effect. The outcome was
artistic beauty, false philosophy, and idolatry.
These are now confronted with a new faith in the
person of Paul. Standing in the public tribunal,
surrounded by the representatives of the great
philosophic schools, and with the beautiful objects
of Pagan devotion on every side, he puts into one
broad statement the representative thought of
Pagan idolatry : " The godhead is like to gold,
silver, and stone, graven by man's device." He
briefly and sharply characterizes the error as a
mark of ignorance. The stamp upon all the splen-
did artistic paraphernalia of worship is that of
ignorance, — the ignorance of the past perpetuated

323

324 GOD AND THE TIMES OF IGNORANCE.

in the present. It was a severe thing to say to
a people who cherished the past so fondly, who
deified its great men, that all the old worship of
their fathers, all the dear old stories of gods and
heroes which it was still their delight to embody
in gold and ivory and gems and marble, were but
marks of ignorance, — especially severe to a people
who boasted of their culture ; and perhaps not the
least irritating thing was the attitude in which
Paul represented his own God — that God so new
and strange to his hearers — towards their religious
history and worship. He had tolerated it, over-
looked it, as a matter which in no way concerned
his own honor. Truly, it was not strange that
Epicurian and Stoic sneered, and asked, "What
will this babbler say ? "

This is the point for our study to-day. Paul's
words bear one, and but one, simple construction :
that God tolerated and permitted, or, to use his own
word, " overlooked," the follies of an ignorant and
idolatrous age : " The times of ignorance therefore
God overlooked."

This raises, as you at once perceive, the very
difficult question concerning certain things which
God has permitted to run their course in past
ages, — things which will not for an instant bear
the test of even the lowest Christian morality. It
would be the height of folly to underrate or ignore
this difficulty. I certainly am not presumptuous
enough to think that I can wholly resolve it. But
we can face facts, we can grasp general principles
of God's administration as revealed in the facts,

GOD AND THE TIMES OF IGNORANCE. 325

and we can walk together as far as the Bible and
history give us solid footing. And thus I think we
shall obtain some light at least, and get upon lines
which, though they may not carry us as far as
we might desire, certainly bear in the right direc-
tion. We shall never be the worse Christians or
the worse theologians for acknowledging real diffi-
culties when they arise. It would be the strangest
of things if the economy of an infinite God did
not present some real and some insoluble difficul-
ties to the finite understanding.

As we study the Bible history, we see two move-
ments or currents in progress simultaneously.
One of these we may call the natural historic
movement ; that is to say, the progress of a his-
tory, like that of Israel, for example, according to
the natural laws, the ordinary physical influences
under which nations mature, such as climate, soil,
migration, conquest. There are those who refuse
to see, in the history related in the Bible, any
thing more than this. When, for instance, Abra-
ham goes out from his country, it is merely the
ordinary migration of a Semitic tribe beyond the
Euphrates. The Hebrews go down into Egypt
because of its fertility, and under the pressure of
famine. The same results ensue as always where
a stronger and a weaker race come into contact.
The law of the survival of the fittest holds. The
stronger race subdues and enslaves and oppresses
the weaker. The natural revolt against oppression
follows. There is another migration, and the op-
pressed people find the way at last to Canaan.

326 GOD AND THE TIMES OF IGNORANCE.

Then comes, naturally, a long period of confusion.
Two hostile races are side by side, like the Normans
and the Saxons in England. The civil polity of
Israel is struggling to shape itself to the new condi-
tions, and this struggle throws to the surface the
strange characters and incidents of the Book of
Judges. Gradually the need of an absolute head
develops : the popular voice demands a king, and
the monarchy is instituted. This, I repeat, is the
only aspect of the Bible story which some will
allow ; but another, and let us hope a larger, class
detect another influence and another movement
in this history ; and to them this is the controlling
movement, the influence which gives character and
direction to the other. That is the providential
movement, the outworking of a divine purpose.
In other words, the Bible is, to such readers, a
record, not only of the great national changes of
nations and men, but of these changes as shaped
and guided by a superintending Providence toward
the fulfilment of a divine purpose. Thus, where
the philosopher sees only the migration of a tribe
under some physical pressure, the religious histo-
rian hears the Lord say unto Abraham, " Get thee
out from thy kindred and from thy father's house."
Where the one sees Abraham blindly conforming
to the fierce Syrian ritual which bade him slay
Isaac, the other hears God say, " Take now thy son,
thine only son, and offer him on the mountain."
Where the one sees only the natural uprising and
emigration of a slave people, the other sees God
beginning to mould a nation to preserve and trans-
mit his truth.

GOD AND THE TIMES OF IGNORANCE. 327

And to us, at least, the Bible ceases to have any
special moment or meaning if this element is left
out of it. If the Bible is not the record of God's
saving and educating purpose in the world, if God
is not behind and through its historic movement,
then the Bible is unworthy of our special rever-
ence.

Now, our difficulty arises out of the fact that
these two movements, the natural and the provi-
dential, are mysteriously intertwined ; that God's
design works itself out through much which, to an
educated Christian sense, is cruel, selfish, and even
brutal, and by means of men who fall below even
the lower types of the social morality of our day.
Certainly, if we were called on to select types of
devout servants of God, we should not choose
Samson nor Barak nor even Gideon. They are
passionate, revengeful, superstitious, sometimes
loose in morals ; and yet they are placed by a
New-Testament apostle among the heroes of faith.
Take, for instance, the story of Jael. She is repre-
sented as acting under a divine impulse. She is
praised by the prophetess Deborah as the Lord's
deliverer of Israel ; but, after all, say what you
will, it was a brutal thing to drive a tent-pin
through the temple of a sleeping man. It was a
treacherous thing to allure even an enemy with
hospitable invitation and with promise of safety.
Or Samson, announced as devoted to God from
his birth, and of whom we keep reading at inter-
vals, " The spirit of the Lord came upon him," —
can you commend him to your children for imita-

328 GOD AND THE TIMES OF IGNORANCE.

tion? Or, there is that horrible business of the
Canaanites, which, in some aspects at least, must,
I fear, continue to be a puzzle, — the divine man-
date to exterminate man, woman, and child. These
are terrible facts, and facts which lie in our way as
inevitably as the crossing of the Red Sea or the
birth of our Saviour.

Take the matter of genealogy. Take that gene-
alogical line which we should naturally suppose
would have been kept absolutely pure along its
whole length, — the line of our Lord's human
descent. And yet it is not so. He was of the
tribe of Judah, but you find some strange episodes
in the history of Judah. He was of the stock of
David; but the Book of Ruth and the Book of
Chronicles will tell you that Salmon was the
father of Boaz, and Matthew will tell you that
the mother of Boaz was Rahab.

Such illustrations — and they are but specimens
of a great number — show us that, in the Bible, the
natural and the providential currents do not run
side by side like the Rhone and the Arve, where
they issue from Lake Geneva, each preserving its
own distinct color, but, on the contrary, mingle ;
so that, to human eyes, God's work in history
seems discolored by human passion and infirmity.

Now, as I have already said, these facts involve
difficulties ; but we can nevertheless discover, run-
ning through the mass of facts, some straight
tracks leading us to three general principles, which
we will do well to have clearly in mind always
when we read our Bibles.

GOD AND THE TIMES OF IGNORANCE. 329

The first principle is one with which you are
already familiar ; namely, that there is a progress
in the divine revelation in the Bible, — a progress
from limited to fuller revelation, from smaller to
larger knowledge, from more contracted to ex-
panded views of God and of truth. The Bible
is a record of a revelation given, as we are told
in the Epistle to the Hebrews, " at sundry times
and in divers manners." Take, for example, the
truth of the incarnation, the very heart of Scrip-
ture. There is a fulness of time which must
come before the Redeemer can be revealed ; until
then there are foreshadowings, types, symbols,
prophecies. Now, after Christ has come, the same
law holds. He plainly tells the disciples that
larger and richer developments are to come after
him : "I have many things to say unto you, but
ye cannot bear them now. Ye shall see greater
things. When the Spirit is come, he shall guide
you unto all truth." God's earlier revelation is
confined to an individual, a family, a tribe. He
appears as a God of the Jews, a national God.
The idea of the Father of all mankind comes later.
Or, take the doctrine of immortality. How imper-
fect its revelation in the earlier Scriptures ! How
dark and chaotic the picture of the future life
drawn by Job ! It has no sanction in Jewish law,
no symbol in Jewish worship : it is never appealed
to as a motive to exertion, nor upheld as a comfort
in trouble. What a step to the revelation of life
and immortality in the gospel ! Or, take the mat-
ter of spirituality in life and worship. Is there

330 GOD AND THE TIMES OF IGNORANCE.

not a distinct progress from a religion which re-
quired the complicated apparatus of altars, ark,
candlesticks, curtains, incense, shew-bread, sacri-
fices, to that which intelligently accepts the truth
that God is a spirit? So, too, there is a progress
from the morality which must be held in leading-
strings, kept to duty by specific rules and minute
precepts, to the freedom with which Christ makes
his disciples free, throwing them upon the guid-
ance of the conscience enlightened by his Spirit.
All these illustrations, with a multitude more, show
us clearly that the revelation of God and the
unfolding of character in Scripture are as the
progress from starlight to the brightness of noon.

But this principle necessitates a second, — the
principle of accommodation. We must never for-
get that we, as Christians, read the Bible from a
New-Testament stand-point; and that, conse-
quently, if we read the Old Testament expecting
to find New-Testament standards and principles
in operation there, we shall be constantly disap-
pointed and puzzled. As a recent writer has most
aptly said, " We must leave our own position amid
the worked-out results of revelation ; and we should
divest ourselves of our Christian associations, which
are the results of the whole educational work of
God in history." When you read the Book of
Judges, for instance, you cannot help saying,
" These characters are not for my imitation. These
deeds are not such as I ought to do. These words
would not become my lips. How is it that men
who say and do such things are marked as the ser-

GOD AND THE TIMES OF IGNORANCE. 331

vants of God, and endowed with his Spirit ? Or,
here are certain things permitted, even commanded,
by God. They seem inconsistent with what the
gospel teaches me to believe of his character:
what am I to think ? "

You cannot help thinking that there is a terrible
inconsistency if yon do not recognize the fact of
progress in revelation, and the consequent fact of
the accommodation of revelation to the actual con-
dition of mankind. You cannot make the full tide
of the Hudson at the Tappan Zee run in the chan-
nel of the little brook among the Adirondacks,
though the brook may grow into the river. No
more can you expect the full tide of Christian rev-
elation to fit the moral conditions of Israel when
it stood before Sinai. And therefore, as a fact, we
find that God does adapt his mode and measure of
revelation to men as he finds them, instead of
miraculously fitting the men to his highest revela-
tion. For example, take the Israelites at the Red
Sea, and let Christ have come in the flesh, and
have uttered the discourse in the fifteenth and six-
teenth of John, or the Sermon on the Mount, —
would it not have been as an idle word in their
ears? Could they have received those sublime
truths ? Therefore, he gave them symbols and
rites, — the ark and the altar, the pillar of cloud
and of fire. What was the revelation of God in
human form but an accommodation ? Man would
not understand God by hearing that God was a
spirit ; and so the Infinite took upon himself the
form of a servant. Why did he not make man by

332 GOD AND THE TIMES OF IGNORANCE.

a miracle fit for his latest revelation? All that
can be said is, he did not do it. For reasons of
his own, he adapted his revelation to men as they
were. And we ourselves stand upon the same
basis. There is more in revelation than we have
yet seen ; there is a glory to be revealed ; we
might as properly ask why God does not fit us at
once to receive the full weight of glory as it comes
down upon a heavenly nature. We know simply
that that is not his way ; that we could not bear
it if it were revealed.

But this principle goes farther. It is impossi-
ble to deny that God gives temporary sanction to
certain things which will not stand the test of
Christian morality. There is polygamy, for in-
stance. The New Testament refuses to recognize
it. The Christian sentiment of the age abhors it.
The civil law of the Christian community pun-
ishes it. And yet it is among the accepted facts
of the primitive times, and God blesses the off-
spring of polygamous marriages, as in the case of
Joseph. Abraham was no less the friend of God
and the father of the faithful because he had
Hagar as well as Sarah to wife, and Jacob was
called a prince with God, though Rachel and Leah
shared his conjugal affection. Slavery was incor-
porated into the Mosaic law. God might have
brought the ages of Deborah and of Samson up
to the level of the Sermon on the Mount, but he
did not. He might have worked out his purpose by
new methods specially devised ; but he took men's
crudity and cruelty and savage passion, — the prac-

GOD AND THE TIMES OF IGNORANCE. 333

tice of war and all its attendant miseries, — took
them as they were, and let these things work them-
selves out according to their natural law, accord-
ing to the spirit and the methods of their age.

Christ recognized this fact clearly enough.
When the Pharisees appealed against him to
Moses on the question of divorce, he said, " Moses,
because of the hardness of your hearts, suffered
you to put away your wives : but from the begin-
ning it was not so." That is to say, the standard
of true marriage was fixed in the beginning in
Eden : " Therefore shall a man cleave unto his
wife, and they shall be one flesh." What was
Christ's baptism by John but a temporary adapta-
tion to crude religious conceptions? What else
did he mean by " suffer it now " ? Or do not his
words in the Sermon on the Mount point back to
a similar accommodation? "Ye have heard that
it hath been said by them of old time " — and
those sayings were in the law too ; they were not
mere popular proverbs: "but I say unto you"
something different and better. Surely the pure
utterances of God do not repeal each other.

We have, thus far, two principles. First, that
there is a progress in divine revelation ; second,
that there is an accommodation in divine revela-
tion. To these we must now add a third, without
which the whole question would be left in worse
confusion than before.

The principle is this : that through this par-
tial, growing, and accommodated revelation, Gfod is
continually working toward his own perfect ideal.

334 GOD AND THE TIMES OF IGNORANCE.

You can easily see, that if you once admit this
fact of a progressive revelation, — and you cannot
deny it, — the character of the revelation must be
judged by its general tendency and by its outcome.
Suppose, for example, I should give a peach-stone
to a man who had never seen a peach, and tell
him, that, if he would plant it, it would yield a
delicious fruit ; and if, after a few weeks, he should
dig it up, and, finding the seed just sprouting,
should come jeering, and saying, " Do you call that
a delicious thing ? " you all see what the proper
answer would be. Back of the fruit is a process, a
long process. Why God did not make the peach
to spring in an instant fully ripe from the ground,
is not the question. It is enough that he did not,
but subjected it to the law of growth; and you
cannot pronounce upon the meaning or the quality
of that process until the tree is grown, and the
fruit hangs ripe and blushing on the bough. Then
all becomes plain. So, back of the perfect law
and ihe perfect manhood of the gospel lies this
slow, moral growth of humanity. You cannot un-
derstand God's meaning in it until you see its con-
summate result. When you once perceive that
the Bible means Christ, that the history recorded
in the Bible moves steadily toward Christ, then
you may begin to understand that the imperfec-
tion of the early time means perfection in the
later time ; that God's toleration and accommoda-
tion are simply parts of the process which is to
issue in the cheerful subjection of a man in Christ
to the perfect law of the gospel. Hence, "The

GOD AND THE TIMES OF IGNORANCE. 335

morality of a progressive dispensation,"' as Canon
Mozley remarks, " is not the morality with which
it starts, but that with which it concludes." When
you want to form a judgment of some great his-
toric man, do you study carefully the first ten
years of his life, marked by his crudeness, passion,
and waj^wardness, and stop there, and decide that
the man was a hasty, weak, passionate man ? Do
you not rather read his life backward in the light
of his glorious prime? Do you call his father
weak, inconsistent, corrupt, because he bore with
the boy's childish folly, and accommodated his
own higher wisdom to the lad's ignorance and
crudity? As, therefore, we study God's economy
in the Bible history, we find that there is a con-
tinuous upward movement in it. Toleration is
exercised, not as a compromise with sin, but with
a view to making toleration unnecessary. With
all its accommodations, God's economy is never
content to leave the man or the people in the
condition to which it accommodates itself. It ac-
commodates to raise. Its testimony against sin is
clear, unvarying, trumpet-toned throughout. Its
punishment of sin is terrible. Side by side with
the record of the call and approval of such agents
as Samson and Deborah, goes a faithful record of
divine retributions. But, through all, God's pur-
pose is clearly defined to lead men up to a higher
level of morals and faith. The polygamic ideal
of marriage moves upward toward the Christian
ideal as embodied in Paul's beautiful words to
the Ephesians. Christianity finds slavery spread

336 GOD AND THE TIMES OF IGNORANCE.

over the Roman world ; and it does not begin a
crusade against slavery, which would have rent
society asunder and defeated its own ends, but
takes Roman society as it finds it, and infuses the
spirit of the gospel into the relation of master
and slave : and yet Paul sends Onesimus back to
Philemon. Gradually the great Christian truths
of the dignity of the human soul, of the personal
right and responsibility of the individual, of the
law and spirit of love, are gathering force and
leavening society. It was a little gain when it
gained strength enough to make a law forbidding
a slave to be crucified. It was a further gain
when Constantine forbade the separation of the
families of slaves. It was a further gain when
Justinian abolished all the old restrictions of the
Pagan laws upon manumission, and granted to
the freed slave nearly all the privileges of the
citizen. Im-the old city of Ravenna, lying down
amid the marshes of the Adriatic, stands a noble
church, built in the sixth century ; and as one
stands amid its graceful arcades, its richly carved
capitals, its costly slabs of Greek marble, its bla-
zing mosaics, his mind runs down a long perspec-
tive of history, as he remembers that this church
was dedicated by a Roman emperor to the mem-
ory of a slave who was buried alive for exhorting
a brother martyr to fidelity under his tortures.
That was a gain upon Nero's time. And so the
leavening process went on, until, in the fourteenth
century, slavery had ceased in Europe; and still
on, until, in its last stronghold, the institution

GOD AND THE TIMES OF IGNORANCE. 337

was honeycombed, and fell to pieces, and not even
the appeal to the law of Moses could save it.
That was just what God had meant all the while.
Elijah was a prophet of fire, harsh and stem. None
the less God used and honored him in his own
generation, — yea, so much as to say, " There shall
not be dew nor rain these years, but according to
thy word." And yet "Christ rebuked the disciples
who wanted to do the very same thing that Elijah
did, — to call down fire from heaven on those who
had insulted him. God had sent the fire at Elijah's
call. Christ told the disciples they were of another
dispensation, where the spirit and deeds of Elijah
were out of place. " Ye know not what spirit ye
are of. Ye are ignorant." The time of Elijah's
ignorance, God had overlooked ; the Christian dis-
ciples' ignorance, Christ rebuked and corrected;
and yet the God of Elijah, and the Christ who
reproved James and John, are one .nd the same.
There is no inconsistency between the sending of
fire and the forbidding of fire. Elijah is first
understood, and his place fixed by the spirit and
the deeds of Christ. There is a very significant
passage at the close of the eleventh of Hebrews,
in which these Old-Testament saints are ranked
among the heroes of faith, — a passage which
groups them all under the general law we have
been discussing : " God having provided some
better thing for us, that they, apart from us, should
not be made perfect." What does this teach but
that God's purpose in the education of men does
not fulfil itself in any man or generation of men,

338 GOD AND THE TIMES OF IGNORANCE.

but in the whole history of mankind. According
to this, we are not to view Abraham and Moses
and Gideon and Samson merely with reference to
their own time, but as parts, along with ourselves,
of God's great movement in bringing the race to
the measure of Christ's manhood.

But we must not leave this subject without allud-
ing to the practical conclusion which Paul draws
from God's forbearance in past ages : " The times
of ignorance therefore God overlooked; but now
He commandeth men that they should all every-
where repent." In other words, God's tolerance
in the past is a warning against presuming on his
forbearance in the present. So far from being an
encouragement to sin, it is a most pregnant warn-
ing against sin, a most imperative call to repent-
ance. God bore with the crudeness and ignorance
of the men of olden time, in order that men of a
later and more enlightened day should have no
excuse for claiming his forbearance. A very dif-
ferent conclusion this from that which certain men
at the present day draw from this Old-Testament
record, making it a ground of attack upon God's
character, and a reason for rejecting his later reve-
lation in Christ. As we in happier times read of
those old days of brutal struggle, cruelty, character
tainted with human passion, our proper sentiment
is that of wonder at the patience of God through
all these ages, of admiration at the wisdom of his
forbearance, of congratulation that he has pro-
vided some better thing for us. Let me repeat,
that, through all these ages of patient forbear-

GOD AND THE TIMES OF IGNORANCE. 339

ance, God's testimony is uniform, unmistakable,
terrible against sin : and the true course of every
man who studies this record is, to turn his face
toward the cross ; to seek in Christ's sacrifice de-
liverance from the power of the evil passions which
wrote their mark so deeply on the olden times ; to
find in Christ's character the model for the spirit
and the deeds of the man of to-day. In the light
which is thrown backward from the cross, Barak,
Deborah, Samson, Jephthah, — yea, Jael with her
cruel hammer and nail, — stand, saying to the men
of this generation, " Repent, repent ! we acted but
according to the light we had. That we were
God's instruments was not the result of our virtue,
but of his wisdom and tolerance, which used the
agents at his hand. But you, under the light of
the gospel, with our errors on record to warn you,
with the example of One who knew no sin to
beckon you to purity of life and sweetness of
spirit, — repent ye ! the kingdom of heaven is at
hand."

My friends, this history is reproduced, on a
smaller scale, in your individual life. You have
had your times of ignorance and crudeness, your
times of the dominion of passion ; and though you
have had less excuse than they had, yet how your
life has been marked by the forbearance of God !
How much he has overlooked and pardoned in
every one of us ! What is the practical result of
this forbearance in your case to-day ? Has it led
you to a true estimate of sin ? Has it made you
afraid of sin ? Has it led you to the Lamb of God,

340

GOD AND THE TIMES OF IGNORANCE.

which taketh away the sin of the world ? or are
those terrible words of the apostle verified in you,
" Or despisest thou the riches of his goodness and
forbearance and long-suffering ; not knowing that
the goodness of God leadeth thee to repentance ?
but after thy hardness and impenitent heart treas-
urest up unto thyself wrath against the day of
wrath and revelation of the righteous judgment
of God ; who will render to every man according
to his deeds " ?

XIX.

THE PKOMISE OF INCOMPLETENESS.

XIX.

THE PROMISE OF INCOMPLETENESS.

"And these all, having had witness borne to them through
their faith, received not the promise, God having provided some
better thing concerning us, that apart from us they should not
be made perfect." — Heb. xi. 39, 40.

THERE was a plain mechanic in a little town
in Scotland, who feared God, and built houses
for a livelihood. He never had more than three
months of schooling in his life. Let us draw a
circle round the seventy-five years of that life, and
look at it merely by itself. Measured by the ordi-
nary standards of the world, how cramped it is !
how short in its range ! how insignificant ! What
does one builder of peasants' cottages, more or
less, matter ? But, then, can we look at that life
in that way? Can we look at any life in that
way? It is plain to us all that we cannot; for
every life everywhere establishes connections and
creates consequences. The statement of Scripture,
" No one of us liveth unto himself," may be said
to be self-evident; and, therefore, no man's life-
account can be made up at his death. It is with
a life as it is with a large estate. It cannot be
closed up at once upon the death of the testator.

343

344 THE PROMISE OF INCOMPLETENESS.

Certain obligations have a given time to run. Cer-
tain outstanding amounts of capital may not be
paid in for years. Certain lands or houses cannot
be sold until certain other persons die. And we
all know, moreover, that an estate may depreciate
after the testator's death. His investments may
not turn out well in the end. Indeed, it is doubt-
ful if the real sum total of any man's life can be
stated until the end of all things. This humble
mechanic, for instance, was the father of a son
whose name is known and honored wherever the
English language is spoken. To James Carlyle's
narrow life in the village and in the kirk and in
his own cottage, must be added the sum of Thomas
Carlyle's life, and the influence of his writings,
and the influence of the men whose thought has
been stimulated or shaped by those writings. And
so the son himself says, "Let me not mourn for
my father ; let me do worthily of him : so shall he
still live even here in me, and his worth plant
itself honorably forth into new generations."

I have taken this familiar illustration as con-
taining in itself the substance of my text to-day.
The truth it gives us is, that no man's life can be
estimated by itself, but helps to complete the past,
and is completed by the future. No man's life can
be judged as an isolated unit ; it must be judged
as part of a whole : and therefore every man is a
debtor to the past and to the future.

This is a peculiar text. These people — Abra-
ham, Jacob, Moses, and the rest — were the spir-
itual heroes of an earlier time, representing the

THE PROMISE OF INCOMPLETENESS. 345

nation's moral high-water mark. They were pow-
ers, and society acknowledged and bore witness
to their power. Yet there was a good in store,
which, though they contributed to it, did not come
to them. There was a promise infolded in their
life which was not fulfilled to them, but to those
who came after them. We should naturally say,
that, if there were any large and healthful result to
follow the sacrifice of home, the surrender of royal
splendor and culture for the desert and the society
of a slavish rabble, the dangers of the lion's den
and of the fiery furnace, it ought to have fallen
to the lot of those who made these sacrifices, and
faced these dangers. But it was not so. They
bore themselves, in these hard conditions, in such
a way as to call forth the admiring witness of their
time, and of later times ; but " they received not
the promise,*' and the better thing provided was
for those who came after them. If their life is to
be estimated only in itself, if its record is to cover
only the sum of its years, then this state of things
seems unjust and cruel, and the life itself of little
account.

But you at once see that the writer is taking
a far wider view than this. He is contemplating
these early heroes, not only by themselves, but as
links in a great succession of men of faith. He is
viewing the results of their life as parts of the
great development of humanity at large. What
they received or enjoyed of ease, pleasure, or suc-
cess is not the question ; but in what relation did
they stand to the world's welfare ?

346 THE PROMISE OF INCOMPLETENESS.

Now, the recognition and acceptance of this as
a law of life has a vast and decisive influence upon
any man's character. It shapes a man of a differ-
ent type from one who regards his life as an end
to itself; and it is here set down to the credit of
these Old-Testament heroes, as an element of their
faith, that they apprehended this larger law, and
lived by it ; that they put mere personal consider-
ations out of sight, — were content to be merely
stages, and not finalities, in the great growth of
human history. They saw that there was a richer
future, which they were not to share personally.
Moses had to be content with the wilderness, and
to forego the promised land, to which he had
brought the people. Jacob was not to enjoy the
brilliant future which his dying eyes saw. Joseph
could provide only for the resting of his bones in
Canaan : he was not to see it. And hence the
writer says of these men, that they saw the prom-
ises as sailors see dimly the shore of a desired and
beautiful land, where they may not disembark.
They " confessed that they were strangers and pil-
grims on the earth." " Now," he continues, " they
that say such things make it manifest that they are
seeking after a country of their own," — a place be-
yond this world. "Now they desire a better coun-
try ; that is, an heavenly." In other words, all this
matter of success and reward and happy fixedness
is transferred to another realm. They forego these
on earth. So far as this world is concerned, their
life goes to minister to other lives, and is simply
a factor in the progress of mankind as a whole.

THE PROMISE OF INCOMPLETENESS. 347

This is a far deeper and wider conception of
faith than we commonly form. We are disposed
to make faith exclusively personal, to trust God
mostly for what he will do for us, or for those
most closely bound to us. We say to ourselves.
" We must trust God for daily bread, for provision
for old age or sickness, for a place in heaven ; "
and so we must. So Christ commands us to
do ; but, at the same time, he teaches us to give
faith a much wider range. Let me illustrate
simply. You and I are citizens of this republic.
More than twenty years ago its existence was
menaced. War was in the land, public sentiment
was divided, disaster was imminent. Every man
knew what significance lay in the issue of that con-
flict for a long future. There were two ways of
looking at the matter. A man might consider
simply the possible effect of the war upon his prop-
erty, — whether his securities would be depreciated
or not ; whether he was to be left in comfort and
luxury, or thrown upon his daily toil for his daily
bread, — and that view would determine his atti-
tude towards the whole conflict. He would em-
brace the side which promised best for himself.
There were such men, and they met with the con-
tempt which they deserved ; but there were other
men, and more of them, who saw something larger
than their own fortune. Their faith and hope and
desire took in the whole great question of the
nation's welfare. The dominant thought with them
was not, " What will become of me and of my for-
tune ? " but, " What is to become of the country ? "

348 THE PROMISE OF INCOMPLETENESS.

And this was the thought which made them joyful
over victory, and despondent over defeat. This was
what made them pour their money into the nation's
treasury, and put themselves into the ranks. It was
the merging of the individual man's interest in the
interest of the State and of millions yet unborn.
Similarly, in becoming Christians, we become citi-
zens of heaven. If we are loyal citizens, our
thought must include the interests of the kingdom
of heaven : and these must be the dominant inter-
ests, rising above all selfish considerations ; for the
very first condition of citizenship in the kingdom
of God is, as Christ very plainly tells us, to deny
self. We are parts of a great divine economy, of
a great march of ideas and character ; builders on
a great building of God, each carving his stone, or
laying his few courses of brick ; husbandmen in
God's vast domain, each tilling his few acres, — one
sowing, another reaping ; one planting, another
watering. No man's faith is perfect which regards
merely his own salvation ; no man's prayer is ac-
cording to Christ's standard which leaves out,
" Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done on earth
as it is in heaven."

Thus identifying ourselves with the interests of
God's kingdom, — the whole development of our
race, — we find ourselves identified with a process.
The perfect man, the perfect society, are not cre-
ated out of hand. They have not come yet ; but
they are slowly coming, and coming through much
crudeness and imperfection by the way. Thus,
then, the kingdom of God is no exception to the

THE PROMISE OF INCOMPLETENESS. 349

law which obtains in other kingdoms, — that
growth involves imperfection and destruction.
Take the law as it holds in nature. Growth comes
through death. The corn of wheat brings forth
fruit only as it dies. In nature's processes, we find
much which serves merely as the step or the scaf-
folding to something better and greater and more
beautiful, and which, when its purpose is accom-
plished, passes away. Where are last year's leaves ?
They came forth in freshness and beautj^ last
spring, as they are coming out this morning ; they
waved and rustled through the summer heats ;
they served their purpose of shade ; they gathered
the influences from the atmosphere for the nurture
of the tree, and gave them back again in moisture ;
they sheltered the growing fruit ; and then, when
the fruit was ripe, they faded, and fell like drop-
ping gold through the autumn haze. They had
done their work : they were no more needed on
the branch. If they had a further mission, it
must be under new forms and conditions. There
is the worm. It crawls in the sun, and lies upon
the leaf, and then wraps itself in the cocoon ; and
then springs forth the butterfly in all the glory of
gold and purple : and the worm-life and the co-
coon-life have done their work, and have given
that beautiful creation to the air and the flowers,
and they pass away.

Go higher up, into the life of man. A perfect,
healthy child, how beautiful it is ! how winning,
how innocent ! how natural and graceful its atti-
tudes ! What parent has not found himself look-

350 THE PROMISE OF INCOMPLETENESS.

ing back to the years of infancy with a feeling
that the years which have made his children men
and women have robbed him of something ineffably
sweet and precious ? Childhood is only a stage :
so is youth, with its flush of hope, its high aims,
its fulness and vigor of life ; and so manhood, with
its strength and achievement. In a normally
developed life, each stage, as it passes away, hands
over to its successor something better and stronger.
Does the process end with old age ? Is there not
something better beyond the line which we call
death ? Scripture itself breaks out into praises of
the human body, so fearfully and wonderfully
made ; but the charnel-house tells you what becomes
of this divinely ingenious mechanism : " Thou
turnest man to destruction ; and sayest, Return, ye
children of men ; " and a new generation comes to
the front, only to run the same round, which ends
in the sepulchre. A wondrous waste it seems to us.
So of society. It passes through crude condi-
tions, which give place to higher and better condi-
tions. There is a race which does not enjoy, and
is not fitted to enjoy, Raphaels and Shakspeares
and Dantes, but which plies the sword and the
axe, — a rough-handed and rough-mannered race.
The delicate touch of the harp-string, the cultured
intercourse of the saloon, are for the later genera-
tions for which these have made the standing-
ground. One here and there, some prophet of
his time, catches glimpses of these higher possi-
bilities, but only sees them afar off. One life is
spent in evolving the powers of electricity : the

THE PROMISE OF INCOMPLETENESS. 851

man who comes after reaps the full benefit of
the telegraph and telephone. A Columbus dis-
covers America : we enjoy it.

Go still higher, into the region of religion and
worship. The same law holds. Religion is not
given to man full-grown. The true faith works
its way into shape and power out of a mesh of
false faiths. One by one these fall off, and die,
leaving only what is essentially true to be taken
up into the new and higher form. The history of
religion is indeed a history of the march of eter-
nal truths ; but it is also a history of accommoda-
tion and temporary provision, of the breaking of
types and the fading of shadows : " He taketh
away the first, that he may establish the second."
God tolerates stages of crudeness and imperfect
moral development : " The times of ignorance
God overlooked." He holds back from one age
forces which come into play later. He left out,
for instance, from earlier methods of moral train-
ing, the stimulus and discipline which we get from
the revelation of a future life. Why ? I do not
know. Why did he not send Christ at once to
Eden's gate to meet the banished inmates ? I do
not know. I know only that all the generations
from Abraham to David are fourteen generations,
and from David unto the carrying away into
Babylon are fourteen generations, and from the
carrying away into Babylon unto Christ are four-
teen generations. Therefore we have dark hints
of a race of giants, of an age of brute force, out
of which flash the sparks from Tubal Cain's ham-

352 THE PROMISE OF INCOMPLETENESS.

mer; and the notes of the wild "song of the
sword" are heard, and the huge bulk of Babel
rises through the mist. A chaos of wickedness,
and then a chaos of tumbling waters. Then the
patriarchal history, with the faith of Abraham,
indeed, but with the worldliness of Lot, and the
trickery of Jacob. Then the seething transition
period of the judges, — Shamgar with his ox-goad,
Jael with her hammer and tent-pin, Samson with
his gigantic strength and grim humor and childish
passion and gullibility, Gideon with his lamps and
pitchers and trumpets, — and so on, down through
the monarchy and the prophetic age. Not one
of the men mentioned in this catalogue in the
eleventh of Hebrews can be held up as a perfect
model of character for the men of a Christian age.
The New-Testament morality is higher than that
of the old. The sabbath-school child of to-day
has richer spiritual revelations than Abraham had.
The humblest Christian believer has what Samuel
and Elijah had not.

And as to worship, we say, "God is a spirit :
and they that worship him must worship him in
spirit and in truth." We come to God without
priest or victim or symbol; but what a stretch
between our stand-point and that of the Israelite !
— a stretch strewn with broken types. What a
carefully arranged ritual for the Jew ! What
solemn charge to Moses to make all things ac-
cording to the pattern drawn up in heaven, and
shown him on Sinai ! What minute, specific direc-
tions about the details of ark and altar, fringe and

THE PROMISE OF INCOMPLETENESS. 353

curtain, material and workmanship ! and yet only
that all might pass away: "He taketh away the
first, that he may establish the second." Prophet,
priest, king, — one after another, God breaks these
types in pieces as the fulness of time draws on,
when Christ, the Teacher, the great High-priest,
the Lord of lords, is to come into the world.

We come, then, to the second truth of our text.
Having seen the fact of imperfection, we see that
along with the imperfection goes a promise. You
notice the peculiar word here, "received not the
promise." It is noted as a mark of the faith of
these good men, that they saw a promise of some-
thing better in the imperfection of their own age.
Christ bears witness to this in the words, " Your
father Abraham rejoiced to see my day ; and he
saw it, and was glad." In like manner, Moses saw
a nation in the rabble which went out of Egypt.
To him the desert meant Canaan. So in nature,
the seed, even in its falling into the ground and
dying, utters the promise of the corn : the blossom,
as it is borne down the wind, promises the fruit.
Even the falling leaf, as it settles down to its new
task, promises next spring's juices and leaves. So
in the moral progress of our race. Paul tells us,
that " That is not first which is spiritual, but that
which is natural," that " The first man is of the
earth, earthy ; " but in these he sees the promise
of something better. "Afterwards, that which is
spiritual. As we have borne the image of the
earthy, we shall also bear the image of the hea-
venly. It is sown in corruption ; it is raised in

354 THE PROMISE OF INCOMPLETENESS.

incorruption." Society, in its best development
to-day, is imperfect : the ideal form of government
is yet to be revealed ; but, as we turn over to the
vision of John on Patmos, we see a perfect society,
a holy city, a heavenly Jerusalem, a faultless ad-
ministration.

Now, the practical question for us is, what is
our true attitude toward these two facts of imper-
fection and promise? Our text tells us, by the
example of these men of old. They were im-
perfect men; they lived under imperfect condi-
tions ; they saw a possible good which was not for
them : but through faith they accepted the imper-
fection, and made the best of it, and cheerfully
gave their energy, and endured their suffering, to
make the coming man and the coming time better
than themselves and their time. Hence the pecul-
iar expression of the text : " they, without us,
should not be made perfect." Abraham, Isaac,
Jacob, good men in then time and way, were not
complete either in themselves or in their work.
They went to the making of better men, like Paul
and James and John. Nor were they completed
in Paul and James and John. We see from this
chapter that their work did not end with their
death ; for they are taken up into the New-Testa-
ment economy, and used here as examples and
helps to the faith of New-Testament times. Nor
will the character and work of these patriarchs
be complete until the perfect man in Christ shall
stand forth as the ripe fruit of the Christian cen-
turies,— until the kingdom of Christ shall have

THE PROMISE OF INCOMPLETENESS. 355

come, and his will shall be done on earth as it is
done in heaven. In that man, Abraham and Noah
shall be made perfect. In the fully ripened social
economy of that time, the ages of the patriarchs
and judges and prophets shall be completed.

We are on the same line. We and our time are
simply a stage toward something better. With all
our boast of high civilization, elaborated jurispru-
dence, rich spiritual acquirement, and vast knowl-
edge, there is something better for the men of the
coming time. They will know more, and enjoy
more than we do. They will be better men than
we are. They will have greater riches of spiritual
culture. The life of every thoughtful Christian is
full of pain because of what is unrealized and un-
fulfilled ; because he discerns greater possibilities
of Christian knowledge and Christian efficiency:
"We ourselves, who have the first fruits of the
spirit, groan within ourselves." We are chafed by
the hardness, the ignorance, the obtuseness, of men.
We mourn over numberless cruelties and neglects.
We are indignant at the corruption and trickery
of politics. We weep in secret places over the
coldness and apathy of the church. But the sim-
ple question for each of us is, what are we going
to do with it all ? What will faith do for us in
this condition of things ? We may sit down with
folded hands, and say, " The world is going to de-
struction ; happiness is impossible ; perfection is
an idle dream : and we will give ourselves up to
the tide, and be carried down." That course will
not mark us as men of faith. Or, we may take the

356 THE PROMISE OF INCOMPLETENESS.

stand-point of faith, the stand-point of the men of
this chapter. If perfection is not for us nor for
our time, it need not follow that perfection is
impossible. If perfection cannot attach to any one
age, it may come out as the resultant of all the
ages. The question is simply this: are we will-
ing to accept the imperfection of our own time,
and to do our utmost and our best in it, knowing
that we shall not reap what we sow with tears and
toil ? knowing that the perfect man and the per-
fect time are to come in hereafter ?

It is a high test of faith for a man to do his best
under temporary conditions, as a mere fraction of
a great whole, as a mere means to the development
of some better thing in a future which he is not
to enjoy ; and yet that is the lesson which God's
administration teaches us. How much care and
skill and beauty go into merely temporary things !
Take a wheat-corn, that very thing which is to
fall into the ground and die, and split it open, and
put it under a microscope, and what a perfect
and beautiful organism it is ! Look at that apple-
blossom, which in a few days will be blown away
by the wind, and what perfection of form, what
delicacy of texture and tint ! Each one of those
living motes which dances for an hour in the set-
ting sunlight is finished with all the nicety of
your own anatomy. Mature is prodigal in her
apparent waste of beautiful and perfect things.
So, when God gave a temporary system of worship
to carry men over to Christ, how carefully selected
were the types ; how stringent the insistence on

THE PROMISE OF INCOMPLETENESS. 357

details which seem trivial to us ! Does it not seem
strange to us to find the Almighty giving direc-
tions about the dimensions of the tabernacle, the
weaving of fringes, the color of curtains, the cut-
ting of priests' robes ? Did it matter if the taber-
nacle or the ark or the table of shew-bread were
a foot longer or shorter ? Did it matter if there
were one row more or less of knops and flowers on
a cornice or a pillar? It did matter in God's eyes.
He would let no imperfect nor haphazard work go
out of his hands, though it were only to serve the
purpose of a day. Cannot we read this lesson?
Shall we refuse our best, because our best is to be
merged into something better? Or shall we not
rather feel ourselves at once stimulated and
honored by being allowed to contribute our best
to the great result which is by and by to gather
up into itself the best of all the ages ?

You have read how, in the old border-wars of
Scotland, the tidings of invasion and the summons
to arms were carried hy the fiery cross. One run-
ner took it, and went at full speed to a certain
point, telling the news as he went, and then gave
it to another, who ran on in like manner. It was
not for the messenger to whom that summons
came to sit down and prepare for the defence of
his own house and the protection of his flocks
and herds. He must take the cross, and run for
the next stage. Brethren, the message of Christ's
cross points us beyond ourselves and our own
interest and our own time. It lays on us the
charge of the coming time. It bids us do our

358 THE PROMISE OF INCOMPLETENESS.

best in our own time, as a means to making that
cross the central fact of the future time. " After
us, the deluge " was the motto of debauchers and
sensualists, who cared only for what the present
might yield them, and who were willing to leave
the future to work out its problem, and struggle
with its suffering, as best it might ; who would not
give a thought nor lift a finger to make that prob-
lem easier and that suffering lighter. That is no
motto for Christians. True manhood means more
than eating and drinking, and dying to-morrow.
Our stage of life contains a promise for the next
stage, that it shall be better and higher for our
faithful toil. Our problem is, to push that promise
nearer to its fulfilment.

Thus, then, let us take the promise of the better
thing info the inferior, incomplete conditions of
to-day. Let us accept the fact of incompleteness :
not passively nor idly. That were to exclude
faith, and faith is the very keynote of this lesson.
Nor, on the other hand, despairingly nor angrily.
That were presumptuous, and useless as well. But
let us recognize in it a promise of completeness, a
stage towards it, and a call to promote it. No one
of us can be more than a factor in the world's his-
tory. The power of each factor will appear only
when the whole column shall be cast up. The
sum total will be greater than any factor ; but, for
the very reason that it will include all the factors.
"We must be slow," as one remarks, "to judge
unfinished architecture." Truthfully said the old
Greek poet, " The days to come are the wisest

THE PROMISE OF INCOMPLETENESS. 359

witnesses." If there be truth in that theory of
development, so widely accepted in this day ; if we
are living in an incomplete physical universe, no
less than in partly developed moral and spiritual
conditions, — that fact goes to show, that one law
holds from the natural up to the spiritual. That
holds out the hope that all the apparent waste in
nature will one day be accounted for, and shown
to be no waste : —

" That nothing walks with aimless feet ;
That not one life shall be destroyed,
Or cast as rubbish to the void.
When God hath made the pile complete.

That not a worm is cloven in vain ;

That not a moth, with vain desire,

Is shrivelled in a fruitless fire,
Or but subserves another's gain."

That points again to the larger hope, that the
imperfect work of true men, the imperfect teaching
of half-taught men, the imperfect moral develop-
ment of primitive men, and all the disappointed
aspiration and seemingly fruitless toil and rejected
testimony of God's workmen in all times, will be
found again, revealed in its true value and power,
at the unfolding of

" That one far-off, divine event.
To which the whole creation moves."

It was a profound remark of a modern essayist,
that the continual failure of eminently endowed
men to reach the highest standard has in it some-
thing more consoling than disheartening, and con-

360 THE PROMISE OF INCOMPLETENESS.

tains an " inspiring hint that it is mankind, and
not special men, that are to be shaped at last into
the image of God; and that the endless life of the
generations may hope to come nearer that goal, of
which the short-breathed three-score years and ten
fall too unhappily short." The present, for each of
us, bears the sign of the cross. The crown is in
the future. The true suggestion of incomplete-
ness now is faith and duty, not reward; sowing,
not fruition. Only, with the cross, Christ is in the
present; and the future shall see his own men and
his own work complete in him.

XX.

ONLY A LITTLE WHILE.

XX.

ONLY A LITTLE WHILE.

"But this I say, brethren, the time is short: it remaineth,
that both they that have wives, be as though they had none;

" And they that weep, as though they wept not; and they that
rejoice, as though they rejoiced not; and they that buy, as though
they possessed not;

"And they that use this world, as not abusing it: for the
fashion of this world passeth away." — 1 Cor. vii. 29-31.

THERE is no difference of opinion about that
first statement, " The time is short." It has
passed into a commonplace.

But there is a difference between the admission,
and the practical recognition, of a fact. Even in a
case like this, it may fairly be asked, What is the
practical bearing of our admission ? There is lit-
tle, if any, difference here between ourselves and
the men to whom Paul wrote. They knew that
no long time, at the longest, remained for them on
earth ; they believed that the old order of things
was soon to give place to a new and different and
better order; yet the apostle evidently thought
that a reminder of the fact was necessary, even to
those within the Christian circle. Evidently he
was impressed with the fact that men were marry-
ing and giving in marriage, weeping and rejoicing,

363

364 ONLY A LITTLE WHILE.

buying and selling and laying up possessions, as if
the time were not short.

And the state of things now, I repeat, is not
materially different. Paul's warning is not super-
fluous. Whatever men believe about the perma-
nence of the present order of things, multitudes of
them act as if it were permanent.

The time, then, is short. The world, for us, is
fast passing away. Death cannot be far off, and
death is going to introduce us into new conditions.
We, as Christians, profess to believe that the new
order of things is to be better than the present
order ; that it will clear up what is now dark ; that
it will resolve what is now confused ; that it will
adjust and correct what is now wrong; that it
will rectify and explain what now seems unjust.
Our one question is, What is our proper attitude
towards the present temporary, brief life which
remains to us, in view of the new and larger life
to come? What is the practical bearing of that
single fact of brevity upon our doing, enjoying,
and suffering here?

As a fact of common life, we see that the atti-
tude of people towards a temporary and transient
state of affairs is very different from their attitude
towards something permanent. No man fits up
the room at the hotel where he is to stay for a
week or a month, as he does the home where he
expects to pass his life. When one is waiting in
the vestibule of a public hall where he is to hear
some great orator, or witness some spectacle, he
does not give much thought to the inconveniences

ONLY A LITTLE WHILE. 365

of his situation. There is no place to sit down
comfortably; the vestibule may be chilly; there
may be a good deal of pushing and crowding, and
he may be obliged to come in contact with dis-
agreeable people : but he takes very little note of
these things. The thing for which he has come is
behind those doors ; there his seat is secured ;
there will be warmth and light and comfort : and
he says to himself, if he gives any thought at all
to the matter, " The time is short. This is but for
a few minutes ; it will soon be over ; it is not
worth troubling myself about." When a man rides
down from the central station in a street-car, of
course he would rather have a seat, and the crowd-
ing is rather annoying ; but he never thinks of
making a serious matter of that. His object is
to get down to business. The great interest of
the day is in his office ; and so he holds on by the
strap, and occupies his mind with the plans of
the day, and dismisses all care for the temporary
annoyance.

We all agree that this is right, reasonable, sen-
sible. We laugh at the man who invests temporary
and transient conditions with the importance of
permanent ones. But do we recognize the larger
applications of the same principle? Suppose we
simply enlarge the spaces a little, and set this life
of sixty, seventy, or fourscore years over against
the eternal life of the future. The two spaces are
related to each other as the vestibule to the hall,
the transit on the car to the day's business. Well,
then, can we bring ourselves practically to recog-

366

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nize this relation ; really to regard this life as the
ante-chamber, the time of transit, the room in the
inn where we stay until our house is prepared ?
Can we bring ourselves to regard our real life as
commencing only when this life shall be over ; to
look for our real, permanent interests, for all fixed-
ness and perfection of condition, in the life beyond ;
and to treat the affairs of this life accordingly ?

This is very clearly the drift of the apostle's
words; and not only here, but all through his
writings, one cannot read without seeing how very
slight the hold of this life is upon him. Not that
he has any morbid, sentimental desire to die, not
that he is indifferent to the duties and opportuni-
ties of this life ; but his whole mode of looking
at it and speaking of it indicates that it is to him
merely a preparatory stage, a period of transit.
He is quite willing to abide in the flesh as long as
God wills, and he proposes to occupy himself
during that period for the furtherance of his
brethren's faith ; but he does not hesitate to say
plainly, that to depart and be with Christ is much
the better thing, and that he sometimes has to
struggle between the claims of the present duty
and the overmastering desire to enter upon his
new and better life.

Now, following the order of our text, we find
Paul bringing this idea to bear in certain special
directions, and intimating how it ought to affect
Christians in certain departments of their life and
work. But, before speaking of these in detail, let
me say, what perhaps hardly needs to be said, that

ONLY A LITTLE WHILE. 367

neither here nor elsewhere does Paul, nor any
other inspired writer, use the fact of the shortness
of life to encourage a sense of indifference to
life's duties. The teaching of Christ and of his
apostles is clear and sharp, that life, however short,
is a time of work, of duty, of ministry. If the
world is not to be abused, it is none the less to be
used. Short as the time is, it is long enough for
much weeping and rejoicing ; and, because it is
short, we are not to cultivate indifference to the
joy and sorrow of our brethren, but rather to re-
joice with them that rejoice, and weep with them
that weep. Buying and selling must go on, even
in this short space : we are none the less to be
diligent in business because the time is short.
There may be in the ante-chamber not a few beau-
tiful pictures, a marble column which has blos-
somed under the sculptor's chisel, or a fountain of
sweet waters. These things are for us : we may
and ought to enjoy them. Life, however short,
has its joys and its means of giving joy. We can-
not afford to be indifferent to its suniry side, nor
escape our duty of making it just as sunny as we
can. We are not excused from the courtesies of
life, even on a street-car ; and if we can grasp the
hand of an old friend with our unoccupied hand,
and interchange a few hearty words, so much the
better. The other world may be, and is, the prime
fact ; but this world is a fact, too, though a second-
ary one. If Paul says, " It remaineth that those
who have wives be as though they had none," we
are not to conclude, that, because a man expects to

368 ONLY A LITTLE WHILE.

depart for heaven in a short time, he is therefore
to treat his wife as though she were not.

This being premised, let us now follow the
apostle into some of the details of his application.

" The time is short : it remaineth, that both
they that have wives be as though they had
none." By this we may assume that the apostle
represents the whole class of domestic relations.
These are the nearest and dearest of all the ties
which bind us to earth ; these relations call out
our deepest affections, our best energies ; they are
the things which make life most attractive to us,
and death hardest ; there lie the possibilities of
our worst heart-breaks. And God himself insti-
tuted these relations, and Christ adorned and
beautified and sanctified them by his presence and
first miracle at Cana ; and Paul chooses the love of
husband and wife as a figure of the love of Christ
for the church. Yet it remaineth, that they that
have wives be as though they had none.

It is very easy to see, in the light of familiar
social facts, the side on which the apostle would
guard us. If our earthly homes crowd out the
attractions of the heavenly home, if we use them
to foster our worldliness, our pride and vanity and
self-indulgence, we are misusing them; and we
need the apostle's caution. When that side of our
life becomes so attractive as to shut out the fast-
approaching life of eternity, when home tempts
us to lounge and enjoy while life's short day is
ringing with calls to God's work, when home
ceases to be the nursery of consecrated power, a

ONLY A LITTLE WHILE. 369

temple of worship, a training-school for Christ, a
scene of preparation for heaven, and becomes,
instead, a base for fashion and for shallow pleas-
ure, — then it is time to consider the temptation
and danger which lurk even in so holy a thing as
domestic life, to draw aside the tapestries, and see
how fast the sun is hastening towards the west, to
face the hour when a voice shall call us forth from
these beloved doors, to return no more.

And then, too, we know that often the family
relation is unfortunately not the earthly type of
heaven. We know how men make it the instru-
ment of fostering their pride of birth, and of per-
petuating some insignificant fact of lineage ; and
how, for the sake of preserving a family name,
loveliness and innocence are constrained into alli-
ance with senility and debauchery. If England's
laureate had never written another line, he would
have earned the eternal gratitude of every true
soul by the brand he has left on that monstrous
fiction of long descent, in his poem of " Aylmer's
Field." Even more bitter is the quiet satire of
the Psalmist : " Their inward thought is, that their
houses shall continue forever, and their dwelling-
places to all generations ; they call their lands
after their own names."

On the contrary, we find that, in the New
Testament, domestic life is always treated with
special reference to the life to come. The insti-
tution of the family, beyond any human institu-
tion, points up to God. God himself takes the
name of the family head ; marriage is to be in

370 ONLY A LITTLE WHILE.

the Lord ; children are to be trained in the nurture
and admonition of the Lord. Domestic life is
regarded, first of all, as a link between this short
life and the long future ; as a means to godly
affections, godly living, godly training, godly work-
ing. And thus, in its Scriptural aspect, as a prepa-
ration and not a finality, it emphasizes the words,
" The time is short." The apostle's injunction is
met when the home is treated as a means to holy
and useful living here, and as a preparation for a
better home hereafter.

The apostle next takes up the bearing of this
fact upon the joy and sorrow of this world : " The
time is short. It remaineth that they who weep
should be as though they wept not, and they that
rejoice, as though they rejoiced not."

Let us confine ourselves to one element of the
world's pain and sorrow, — injustice. There is
the fact, patent enough to the most careless, that
multitudes of people fail to get their deserts. The
innocent suffer ; the good do not succeed ; the bad
prosper ; honesty and fidelity go to the wall, while
villany rides by in triumph. It is not always so ;
but why is it so at all? Away back in the far
past we find Job wrestling with the question. It
furnishes, as it always has furnished, not only a
theological problem, but a practical problem. On
the one hand, the reasoner asks, " How did it come
to pass? Why is it alloy^ed?" On the other
hand, the man who is trying to live rightly and
to save his soul asks, "What shall I do with it?
How shall I adjust myself to it?"

ONLY A LITTLE WHILE. 371

And it is interesting to study the various an-
swers which are given to the latter question.
Here comes a Rousseau, who tells us it is all un-
necessary. It is all the result of false training.
Human nature is good ; and, if you only educate
it properly, its good will have free play, and its
evil will be checked, and we shall have a reign of
peace, liberty, equality, and fraternity. You can
read history for yourselves, and can study the
value of Rousseau's answer by the side of the
guillotine and in the lurid light of the French
Revolution.

Or, here comes the communist, saying, " Only
do away with all private interest, and merge all
individual right and difference in the public, and
all will be well." Doubtless, if you could only be
sure of universal love and disinterestedness among
men ; but, unfortunately, the commune of Paris
and the history of Nihilism have some significant
stories to tell of that experiment.

Or, there were earlier answers. There was the
Stoic, who steeled himself against injustice, treated
feeling as a disease, and cultivated insensibility to
pain, anger, and pity alike. Or, there was the
Epicurean, saying, "Yes, pain and sorrow from
human wrong are facts; but I will evade them.
I will keep out of all such relations with men as
will engender injustice or cruelty. I will have no
friendships, and therefore no misunderstandings.
I will have no zeal, and therefore I will have no
disappointments. I will espouse no cause, and
therefore I will suffer no defeats. I will confer

372 ONLY A LITTLE WHILE.

no obligations, and therefore I shall expose myself
to no ingratitude.

And now you will observe one fact, common to
all these views, — that they are strictly bounded
by this life. The evil, if it is to be corrected, must
be corrected here ; and this is the real cleavage-
line between these views and the New-Testament
view which Paul represents in our text.

For you perceive that the New Testament shows
no sympathy with the sentimentalist view, that all
that is needed to prevent injustice is proper edu-
cation. It treats it as a necessary evil. It is a
fact, and will be a fact so long as human society is
not under the power of divine love.

Further : the New Testament does not give us
a picture of any favored man who escapes the
world's injustice. On the contrary, it is a portrait-
gallery of martyrs. The better its men, the more
they suffer at the world's hands. Christ gathers
up into himself all virtues and perfections; and
the cross is the world's practical comment upon
the man in whom no fault could be found. His
name, given by prophecy, and countersigned by
his life, is " Man of sorrows." His great service
to the world is through crucifixion.

And the New Testament, moreover, gives us no
men of iron, insensible to suffering. The victims
of the world's cruelty are real sufferers . If the
New Testament is full of the triumph over pain,
it is equally full of the human sense of pain. The
perfect Man shows us his natural recoil from suf-
fering when he says, "Save me from this hour,"

ONLY A LITTLE WHILE. 373

and, " If it be possible, let this cup pass from me."
Paul is no stoic, but thoroughly a man in his keen
sense of cruelty and wrong. He never affects any
other sentiment. His body is a body of humilia-
tion, — a tent, flapping and straining in the winds
of time, which he will be only too glad to have
taken down, so that he can break camp, and go to
the fair city where Christ is.

Once more : the New Testament puts every
Christian in a positive attitude towards this fact.
He cannot ignore it ; he cannot evade it ; he must
feel it ; and he must feel towards it in the right
way : and that way is not to live under protest,
and let the world's injustice eat all the sweetness
out of life. There are people who have gotten
to brooding over the misery and inequality and
cruelty of this life until they are literally filled
with cursing. The world will not take them at
their own value : therefore they hate the world.
The world deals unjustly by them and theirs : they
stand aloof from the world. They see certain
things wrong in the church ; they mutter in secret
places, and can see no good in the church : all is
formalism and hypocrisy. You find no warrant
for any thing of this kind in the New Testament :
you find the true bearing of a Son of God towards
the world's evil summed up in our Saviour's words,
"Resist not evil." This is really the essence of
this part of our text : " They that weep ; they that
feel keenly the world's cruelty and sorrow, as if
they wept not : " not acting as though all of life
consisted hi the world's being just and kindly to

374 ONLY A LITTLE WHILE.

them, as if to live were only not to weep ; not wast-
ing time in idle lamentation or impotent scolding ;
not consuming themselves in the effort to prove to
the world how great or how good they are : but,
on the contrary, feeling that it is far more impor-
tant to be right than to be thought right ; far more
important to be sweet and loving and tolerant,
and cheerfully busy about God's work, than that
the world should give them their due.

Look at Paul's words about love. They imply
throughout an element of evil and injustice upon
which it is to exert itself. In that thirteenth
chapter of First Corinthians, the very keynote is
struck by Christ's words : " If ye love them that
love you, what thank have ye ? " It is against ha-
tred, evil, injustice, that the quality of love proves
itself. " Beareth all things : " love, the best thing
in this world or in heaven, is none too good for a
burden-bearer, — nay, bears the heaviest burdens of
all. "Believeth all things:" love, which is most
wounded by faithlessness and treachery, is the last
to lose faith in humanity. "Hopeth all things: "
love is set hopefully over against the multitude
of facts in man, and in society, which tempt to
hopelessness. And so with the rest. The very
principle of the divine life, love, most warmed by
sympathy, most sensitive to coldness and injustice,
most deeply cut by cruelty, is the very principle
which is not provoked, and which thinketh no
evil, and which never faileth. You find the same
thought underlying Paul's words in the Epistle to
the Romans about "the powers that be." How

ONLY A LITTLE WHILE. 375

kind and just those powers were he knew who had
felt the scourge at Philippi, and had known the
horrors of the inner prison ; yet, " Let every soul
be subject under the higher powers. Servants,
obey your masters according to the flesh." And so
Peter : " It is thankworthy if a man, for conscience'
sake, endure grief, suffering wrongfully ; " for Christ,
our great example, suffered not only from the un-
just, but for the unjust, esteeming his suffering of
little account if he might but bring us to God.

Now, all this is the purest sentimental nonsense
if this life ends all things. If the wheat and the
tares are to grow together, and no separation is to
be made ; if love is to hope and bear, and no time
is to come when that which is in part shall be
done away, — let us eat and drink and resist evil,
and assert ourselves; for to-morrow we die, and
are as the beasts. But if, as the gospel every-
where assumes, this state of things is passing away,
to give place to a larger and better and more per-
manent one, then let the injustice and cruelty and
sorrow be measured by the proportions of that
larger life. They seem to be much in themselves ;
but Paul puts the proportion for us in one of his
graphic sayings : " This light affliction, which is
but for a moment, worketh out a far more exceed-
ing and eternal weight of glory." The only diffi-
culty with Paul's statement is on the side of the
glory. It is so great and transcendent that it will
not go into any formula that even he can devise.
But even the statement which he does give makes
the sorrow and trial of earth look very small.

376

ONLY A LITTLE WHILE.

Suppose we must be sorrowful to the end of time,
— and many a man and woman has to face that
necessity, — there is something else in life besides
our sorrow. We can be as though we wept not ;
that is to say, we can be as useful and as helpful
and as kindly and as sympathizing and as busy
as if we had no cause to weep. We may have
lost what was ours; but the time is short, and
heaven will give it back with interest. Hard
words, unkindness, neglect, — we all get our share ;
yet we need not be made thereby hard or bitter
or neglectful. We may be to the world, in our
spirit and ministry, just as if these things were
not. The time is short. The day is coming when
Christ's children shall pass into a realm of perfect
love, where no unkindness shall ever make the
cheek flush, and no ingratitude ever wound the
spirit.

And so of our joys : " They that rejoice, as
though they rejoiced not." Not that we are to
pass this life in gloom and sullenness because it is
short, and another life is coming. When the train
goes through the tunnel, the lamps are kindled,
and the carriages made as bright and cheerful as
possible. We shall not sit down, and resign our-
selves to gloom, and go to sleep if we can. No.
The time is short. Let us be cheerful, — all the
more cheerful because the sunlight will pour in by
and by. But if there is grander, richer, more en-
during joy in the life beyond this, it is not the part
of wisdom to be too much absorbed in earthly joy.
When a boy is going on his first journey to the

ONLY A LITTLE WHILE. 377

city, which has been in his mind the sum and ideal
of all splendors, you may find him playing his
game of marbles or ball an hour before the train
starts, but not with the same abandonment which
marks him on the ordinary school holiday, when he
has nothing to do but play. He plays as one who
is ready to drop the bat at a minute's notice, and
go upon his journey, to enjoy his greater pleasure :
and so the comparison of the familiar hymn is not
extravagant : —

" This life's a dream, an empty show ;
But the bright world to which I go
Hath joys substantial and sincere."

You can easily follow out for yourselves the appli-
cations of the thought to the buying and selling,
the possessing and use of the world in general.
All these things, in New-Testament thought, have
their value determined by two facts, — the short-
ness of this life, and the overshadowing, transcend-
ent grandeur of the life to come. Does it not
become us to hold this world lightly in view of
these two truths, — so little time left, and eternity
approaching? Does it not become us to guard
ourselves against being too much absorbed in
business, too much engrossed by pleasure, too
much fretted and irritated by the trouble and
sorrow and injustice of this life ? Such things do
not become those who are passing through this
temporary stage to an eternal home. An old
woman sat one day beside her apple-stand in a
great thoroughfare. A well-known judge walked

378 ONLY A LITTLE WHILE.

up, and stopped for an apple. " Well, Molly,"
said he, " don't you get tired of sitting here these
cold, dismal days ? " — " It's only a little while,
sir," was the answer. — " And the hot, dusty days ? "
— " Only a little while, sir." — " And the rainy,
drizzly days, and your sick, rheumatic days ? " —
" It's only a little while, sir." — " And what then,
Molly ? " — " Then, sir, I shall enter into that rest
which remains for the people of God; and the
troublesomeness of the way there don't pester nor
fret me. It's only a little while." — " But," said
the judge, " what makes you so sure, Molly ? " —
" How can I help being sure, since Christ is the
way, and I am his ? Now I only feel him along the
way : I shall see him as he is in a little while,
sir." — " Ah ! " said the judge, " you've got more
than the law ever taught me." — " Yes, sir, because
I went to the gospel." — "Well," said he, as he took
up his apple, and began to walk off, " I must look
into these things." — " There's only a little while,
sir." My whole sermon is in that story.